Unpacking Online Influence: Your Channel Versus Competitors’ Strategies

YouTube Analytics – How to analyze your and Competitor’s YouTube Video

Richard Bennett

Mar 27, 2024• Proven solutions

Tracking your brand’s YouTube metrics is not enough to ensure success in YouTube. Unless you garner deep insights of your competitors. You must be thinking how can you gauge their company insights using YouTube and track the data movement as well. There is nothing to worry about, we have got you covered. We will show you how to analyze your own channel as well as that of your competitors’ YouTube analytics. Let’s now explore about it!

How to analyze your own YouTube channel/video?

It is important to have reliable YouTube analytics tools for your brand, as videos on YouTube are searchable through Google. They contribute to generate organic traffic for you using both Google and YouTube as a medium. YouTube has a default dedicated analytics mechanism to measure how the video fares in YouTube to gain the most out of it.

Here we have collated the broadly used YouTube insights to ensure that your highly equipped, SEO compatible video engages more audience and performs well. The matrix sums up the most essential parts of YouTube analytics. Let’s go through them.

1. Views

Though, views determine the number of people clicked on a certain video on YouTube, it’s impossible to figure out whether the video has been watched till the end or not. Moreover, they can be altered through clickbait tricks and hence YouTube doesn’t solely put much value on them.

Views along with watch time turn out to be the best bet. Watch time sums up the total amount of time spent (in terms of minutes) on your brand’ videos. With the updated dashboard it becomes easy to get the YouTube analytics and gauge the video’s performance. Using the average view duration, you can know whether your video is being watched till the end or not.

2. Playback Location

As ‘Playback locations’ of YouTube videos can reveal where does all the traffic come from, it would help your channel figure out for which location the video has fared well. It will guide you to reach the backlinks locations/sites. Knowing the popular locations for your YouTube video being played, you can know whether YouTube is the search engine or they have been diverted from somewhere else. Depending on the video playing locations, the views will be segregated in to embedded video, YouTube watch page, mobile devices, and YouTube channel page. Understanding location specific views would help you decide where should you focus to enhance the performance of your video.

3. Demographics

The demographics page helps you get YouTube insights, using them you can know the audience in a gender and location specific manner. For local businesses targeting a certain region, YouTube analytics would prove to be a boon. You can also know the geography and device used by the viewers with this feature. Understanding the gender and location of people will help you create dedicated product videos that would be helpful to them.

4. Traffic sources

Understanding the source of your YouTube video’s traffic would help you track the prominent keywords that viewers use for landing at your YouTube video. You can figure out their choice and their search patterns this way. The YouTube insights will show you whether the viewers found your video by searching YouTube, a channel on YouTube, through suggested videos, or an external link. The YouTube Analytics tool’s panel would assist you in finalizing the most beneficial traffic source for your brand. You can optimize your video and keyword strategy with this.

5. Audience Retention

This data explains how far your video has engaged your audience. Along with views, the duration that a viewer is on your video weighs too. From the audience retention page, you can find out the specific time that a viewer has exited your video and see what made them do so. There are 2 types of audience retention features – absolute audience retention and relative audience retention.

6. Devices

It is important to know which device is being used to watch the video. The metrics is distributed among mobile phones, computer, TV, tablet etc. you will be able to understand whether your video needs to be optimized for a certain video or not.

7. Likes and dislikes

YouTube insights gauge the audience acceptance for your video by the number of likes and dislikes. Videos with a huge number of like implies that it is loved by people, though, the quality of video can’t exactly be defined by the number of likes or dislikes. Even the best quality video created for asking opinions about a certain situation/issue might be good enough but still get dislikes.

8. Subscribers

YouTube analytics help you determine the engagement metrics to explain the origin of your subscribers. It includes both their geo-location, the date of subscription, and the source/medium they used to land with your video on YouTube. You can observe the number of people subscribing and unsubscribing from your YouTube channel.

The subscription stream enables your audience to get suggestions for new videos from your channel and offer better exposure to the service and products you offer.

You May Also Like : How to Get More Subscribers

9. Annotations

While considering YouTube Analytics, it is essential to understand that there are annotations to guide viewers to your business site for more content. It is not necessary that the content is video only, it might include a blog post as well. This will let you understand the click through rate and ‘close’ rates for every annotation. This in turn will assist you in optimizing how to reach your audience and where to place the annotations.

10. Comments

Audience engagement on any YouTube video can easily be gauged by using the vital aspect known as comments. Either it touched a chord in their heart, inspired or motivated them, or simply made them smile, the comments will say it all. Sometimes the audience simply taps ‘Like’ in place of commenting at their convenient.

11. Cards

Cards is a new feature in YouTube analytics and aimed at replacing annotations. This will improve user interactivity of any video and accelerate the engagement. They will act as call to action for informing visitors regarding playlists, videos, merchandising, fan funding, and associated website etc.

12. Sharing

This aspect sums up the amount of shares of the YouTube video across different social networks along with the share date. Google ranking is influenced with the share numbers, as higher the number more the chances of unique backlinks for your videos.

13. Videos in playlists

Favorites has been renamed to ‘Videos in playlists’. Your reach broadens as people keep marking your videos as favorites on their playlist. This is visible to the public on the YouTube channel itself.

How to analyze your competitors

Although, you can’t see the dashboard data of your competitor, there are still some ways to observe and study your competitors’ successful videos and from their views, favorites, ratings, and comments find out the driving force behind it.

For example, reading the comments and see what they are saying. Notice both the positive and negative ones so that you can incorporate the ideas in your videos. You can also make a better video by understanding what a specific demographic region is fond of watching in the said niche.

Or you can use those analyzing tools below to discover the more stats of your competitors.

1. InflueNex

InflueNex is a helpful influencer marketing tool for Analyzing, searching, and managing YouTubers. With the help of this YouTube analytics tool, you’re able to learn your competitors’ channels and videos with detailed information.

2. Rival IQ

This YouTube analytics tool helps you increase social media engagement, conduct competitive analysis to track competition, discovers new content ideas for your target audience. You can use it to leverage your foothold in YouTube.

3. SocialBlade

SocialBlade helps you gain YouTube insights and enables you to understand how your rival brands fare. You can learn from them and enhance your own strategy to beat them.

Read More to Get: 5 Methods to Go Frame by Frame on YouTube Video >>

Richard Bennett

Richard Bennett is a writer and a lover of all things video.

Follow @Richard Bennett

Richard Bennett

Mar 27, 2024• Proven solutions

Tracking your brand’s YouTube metrics is not enough to ensure success in YouTube. Unless you garner deep insights of your competitors. You must be thinking how can you gauge their company insights using YouTube and track the data movement as well. There is nothing to worry about, we have got you covered. We will show you how to analyze your own channel as well as that of your competitors’ YouTube analytics. Let’s now explore about it!

How to analyze your own YouTube channel/video?

It is important to have reliable YouTube analytics tools for your brand, as videos on YouTube are searchable through Google. They contribute to generate organic traffic for you using both Google and YouTube as a medium. YouTube has a default dedicated analytics mechanism to measure how the video fares in YouTube to gain the most out of it.

Here we have collated the broadly used YouTube insights to ensure that your highly equipped, SEO compatible video engages more audience and performs well. The matrix sums up the most essential parts of YouTube analytics. Let’s go through them.

1. Views

Though, views determine the number of people clicked on a certain video on YouTube, it’s impossible to figure out whether the video has been watched till the end or not. Moreover, they can be altered through clickbait tricks and hence YouTube doesn’t solely put much value on them.

Views along with watch time turn out to be the best bet. Watch time sums up the total amount of time spent (in terms of minutes) on your brand’ videos. With the updated dashboard it becomes easy to get the YouTube analytics and gauge the video’s performance. Using the average view duration, you can know whether your video is being watched till the end or not.

2. Playback Location

As ‘Playback locations’ of YouTube videos can reveal where does all the traffic come from, it would help your channel figure out for which location the video has fared well. It will guide you to reach the backlinks locations/sites. Knowing the popular locations for your YouTube video being played, you can know whether YouTube is the search engine or they have been diverted from somewhere else. Depending on the video playing locations, the views will be segregated in to embedded video, YouTube watch page, mobile devices, and YouTube channel page. Understanding location specific views would help you decide where should you focus to enhance the performance of your video.

3. Demographics

The demographics page helps you get YouTube insights, using them you can know the audience in a gender and location specific manner. For local businesses targeting a certain region, YouTube analytics would prove to be a boon. You can also know the geography and device used by the viewers with this feature. Understanding the gender and location of people will help you create dedicated product videos that would be helpful to them.

4. Traffic sources

Understanding the source of your YouTube video’s traffic would help you track the prominent keywords that viewers use for landing at your YouTube video. You can figure out their choice and their search patterns this way. The YouTube insights will show you whether the viewers found your video by searching YouTube, a channel on YouTube, through suggested videos, or an external link. The YouTube Analytics tool’s panel would assist you in finalizing the most beneficial traffic source for your brand. You can optimize your video and keyword strategy with this.

5. Audience Retention

This data explains how far your video has engaged your audience. Along with views, the duration that a viewer is on your video weighs too. From the audience retention page, you can find out the specific time that a viewer has exited your video and see what made them do so. There are 2 types of audience retention features – absolute audience retention and relative audience retention.

6. Devices

It is important to know which device is being used to watch the video. The metrics is distributed among mobile phones, computer, TV, tablet etc. you will be able to understand whether your video needs to be optimized for a certain video or not.

7. Likes and dislikes

YouTube insights gauge the audience acceptance for your video by the number of likes and dislikes. Videos with a huge number of like implies that it is loved by people, though, the quality of video can’t exactly be defined by the number of likes or dislikes. Even the best quality video created for asking opinions about a certain situation/issue might be good enough but still get dislikes.

8. Subscribers

YouTube analytics help you determine the engagement metrics to explain the origin of your subscribers. It includes both their geo-location, the date of subscription, and the source/medium they used to land with your video on YouTube. You can observe the number of people subscribing and unsubscribing from your YouTube channel.

The subscription stream enables your audience to get suggestions for new videos from your channel and offer better exposure to the service and products you offer.

You May Also Like : How to Get More Subscribers

9. Annotations

While considering YouTube Analytics, it is essential to understand that there are annotations to guide viewers to your business site for more content. It is not necessary that the content is video only, it might include a blog post as well. This will let you understand the click through rate and ‘close’ rates for every annotation. This in turn will assist you in optimizing how to reach your audience and where to place the annotations.

10. Comments

Audience engagement on any YouTube video can easily be gauged by using the vital aspect known as comments. Either it touched a chord in their heart, inspired or motivated them, or simply made them smile, the comments will say it all. Sometimes the audience simply taps ‘Like’ in place of commenting at their convenient.

11. Cards

Cards is a new feature in YouTube analytics and aimed at replacing annotations. This will improve user interactivity of any video and accelerate the engagement. They will act as call to action for informing visitors regarding playlists, videos, merchandising, fan funding, and associated website etc.

12. Sharing

This aspect sums up the amount of shares of the YouTube video across different social networks along with the share date. Google ranking is influenced with the share numbers, as higher the number more the chances of unique backlinks for your videos.

13. Videos in playlists

Favorites has been renamed to ‘Videos in playlists’. Your reach broadens as people keep marking your videos as favorites on their playlist. This is visible to the public on the YouTube channel itself.

How to analyze your competitors

Although, you can’t see the dashboard data of your competitor, there are still some ways to observe and study your competitors’ successful videos and from their views, favorites, ratings, and comments find out the driving force behind it.

For example, reading the comments and see what they are saying. Notice both the positive and negative ones so that you can incorporate the ideas in your videos. You can also make a better video by understanding what a specific demographic region is fond of watching in the said niche.

Or you can use those analyzing tools below to discover the more stats of your competitors.

1. InflueNex

InflueNex is a helpful influencer marketing tool for Analyzing, searching, and managing YouTubers. With the help of this YouTube analytics tool, you’re able to learn your competitors’ channels and videos with detailed information.

2. Rival IQ

This YouTube analytics tool helps you increase social media engagement, conduct competitive analysis to track competition, discovers new content ideas for your target audience. You can use it to leverage your foothold in YouTube.

3. SocialBlade

SocialBlade helps you gain YouTube insights and enables you to understand how your rival brands fare. You can learn from them and enhance your own strategy to beat them.

Read More to Get: 5 Methods to Go Frame by Frame on YouTube Video >>

Richard Bennett

Richard Bennett is a writer and a lover of all things video.

Follow @Richard Bennett

Richard Bennett

Mar 27, 2024• Proven solutions

Tracking your brand’s YouTube metrics is not enough to ensure success in YouTube. Unless you garner deep insights of your competitors. You must be thinking how can you gauge their company insights using YouTube and track the data movement as well. There is nothing to worry about, we have got you covered. We will show you how to analyze your own channel as well as that of your competitors’ YouTube analytics. Let’s now explore about it!

How to analyze your own YouTube channel/video?

It is important to have reliable YouTube analytics tools for your brand, as videos on YouTube are searchable through Google. They contribute to generate organic traffic for you using both Google and YouTube as a medium. YouTube has a default dedicated analytics mechanism to measure how the video fares in YouTube to gain the most out of it.

Here we have collated the broadly used YouTube insights to ensure that your highly equipped, SEO compatible video engages more audience and performs well. The matrix sums up the most essential parts of YouTube analytics. Let’s go through them.

1. Views

Though, views determine the number of people clicked on a certain video on YouTube, it’s impossible to figure out whether the video has been watched till the end or not. Moreover, they can be altered through clickbait tricks and hence YouTube doesn’t solely put much value on them.

Views along with watch time turn out to be the best bet. Watch time sums up the total amount of time spent (in terms of minutes) on your brand’ videos. With the updated dashboard it becomes easy to get the YouTube analytics and gauge the video’s performance. Using the average view duration, you can know whether your video is being watched till the end or not.

2. Playback Location

As ‘Playback locations’ of YouTube videos can reveal where does all the traffic come from, it would help your channel figure out for which location the video has fared well. It will guide you to reach the backlinks locations/sites. Knowing the popular locations for your YouTube video being played, you can know whether YouTube is the search engine or they have been diverted from somewhere else. Depending on the video playing locations, the views will be segregated in to embedded video, YouTube watch page, mobile devices, and YouTube channel page. Understanding location specific views would help you decide where should you focus to enhance the performance of your video.

3. Demographics

The demographics page helps you get YouTube insights, using them you can know the audience in a gender and location specific manner. For local businesses targeting a certain region, YouTube analytics would prove to be a boon. You can also know the geography and device used by the viewers with this feature. Understanding the gender and location of people will help you create dedicated product videos that would be helpful to them.

4. Traffic sources

Understanding the source of your YouTube video’s traffic would help you track the prominent keywords that viewers use for landing at your YouTube video. You can figure out their choice and their search patterns this way. The YouTube insights will show you whether the viewers found your video by searching YouTube, a channel on YouTube, through suggested videos, or an external link. The YouTube Analytics tool’s panel would assist you in finalizing the most beneficial traffic source for your brand. You can optimize your video and keyword strategy with this.

5. Audience Retention

This data explains how far your video has engaged your audience. Along with views, the duration that a viewer is on your video weighs too. From the audience retention page, you can find out the specific time that a viewer has exited your video and see what made them do so. There are 2 types of audience retention features – absolute audience retention and relative audience retention.

6. Devices

It is important to know which device is being used to watch the video. The metrics is distributed among mobile phones, computer, TV, tablet etc. you will be able to understand whether your video needs to be optimized for a certain video or not.

7. Likes and dislikes

YouTube insights gauge the audience acceptance for your video by the number of likes and dislikes. Videos with a huge number of like implies that it is loved by people, though, the quality of video can’t exactly be defined by the number of likes or dislikes. Even the best quality video created for asking opinions about a certain situation/issue might be good enough but still get dislikes.

8. Subscribers

YouTube analytics help you determine the engagement metrics to explain the origin of your subscribers. It includes both their geo-location, the date of subscription, and the source/medium they used to land with your video on YouTube. You can observe the number of people subscribing and unsubscribing from your YouTube channel.

The subscription stream enables your audience to get suggestions for new videos from your channel and offer better exposure to the service and products you offer.

You May Also Like : How to Get More Subscribers

9. Annotations

While considering YouTube Analytics, it is essential to understand that there are annotations to guide viewers to your business site for more content. It is not necessary that the content is video only, it might include a blog post as well. This will let you understand the click through rate and ‘close’ rates for every annotation. This in turn will assist you in optimizing how to reach your audience and where to place the annotations.

10. Comments

Audience engagement on any YouTube video can easily be gauged by using the vital aspect known as comments. Either it touched a chord in their heart, inspired or motivated them, or simply made them smile, the comments will say it all. Sometimes the audience simply taps ‘Like’ in place of commenting at their convenient.

11. Cards

Cards is a new feature in YouTube analytics and aimed at replacing annotations. This will improve user interactivity of any video and accelerate the engagement. They will act as call to action for informing visitors regarding playlists, videos, merchandising, fan funding, and associated website etc.

12. Sharing

This aspect sums up the amount of shares of the YouTube video across different social networks along with the share date. Google ranking is influenced with the share numbers, as higher the number more the chances of unique backlinks for your videos.

13. Videos in playlists

Favorites has been renamed to ‘Videos in playlists’. Your reach broadens as people keep marking your videos as favorites on their playlist. This is visible to the public on the YouTube channel itself.

How to analyze your competitors

Although, you can’t see the dashboard data of your competitor, there are still some ways to observe and study your competitors’ successful videos and from their views, favorites, ratings, and comments find out the driving force behind it.

For example, reading the comments and see what they are saying. Notice both the positive and negative ones so that you can incorporate the ideas in your videos. You can also make a better video by understanding what a specific demographic region is fond of watching in the said niche.

Or you can use those analyzing tools below to discover the more stats of your competitors.

1. InflueNex

InflueNex is a helpful influencer marketing tool for Analyzing, searching, and managing YouTubers. With the help of this YouTube analytics tool, you’re able to learn your competitors’ channels and videos with detailed information.

2. Rival IQ

This YouTube analytics tool helps you increase social media engagement, conduct competitive analysis to track competition, discovers new content ideas for your target audience. You can use it to leverage your foothold in YouTube.

3. SocialBlade

SocialBlade helps you gain YouTube insights and enables you to understand how your rival brands fare. You can learn from them and enhance your own strategy to beat them.

Read More to Get: 5 Methods to Go Frame by Frame on YouTube Video >>

Richard Bennett

Richard Bennett is a writer and a lover of all things video.

Follow @Richard Bennett

Richard Bennett

Mar 27, 2024• Proven solutions

Tracking your brand’s YouTube metrics is not enough to ensure success in YouTube. Unless you garner deep insights of your competitors. You must be thinking how can you gauge their company insights using YouTube and track the data movement as well. There is nothing to worry about, we have got you covered. We will show you how to analyze your own channel as well as that of your competitors’ YouTube analytics. Let’s now explore about it!

How to analyze your own YouTube channel/video?

It is important to have reliable YouTube analytics tools for your brand, as videos on YouTube are searchable through Google. They contribute to generate organic traffic for you using both Google and YouTube as a medium. YouTube has a default dedicated analytics mechanism to measure how the video fares in YouTube to gain the most out of it.

Here we have collated the broadly used YouTube insights to ensure that your highly equipped, SEO compatible video engages more audience and performs well. The matrix sums up the most essential parts of YouTube analytics. Let’s go through them.

1. Views

Though, views determine the number of people clicked on a certain video on YouTube, it’s impossible to figure out whether the video has been watched till the end or not. Moreover, they can be altered through clickbait tricks and hence YouTube doesn’t solely put much value on them.

Views along with watch time turn out to be the best bet. Watch time sums up the total amount of time spent (in terms of minutes) on your brand’ videos. With the updated dashboard it becomes easy to get the YouTube analytics and gauge the video’s performance. Using the average view duration, you can know whether your video is being watched till the end or not.

2. Playback Location

As ‘Playback locations’ of YouTube videos can reveal where does all the traffic come from, it would help your channel figure out for which location the video has fared well. It will guide you to reach the backlinks locations/sites. Knowing the popular locations for your YouTube video being played, you can know whether YouTube is the search engine or they have been diverted from somewhere else. Depending on the video playing locations, the views will be segregated in to embedded video, YouTube watch page, mobile devices, and YouTube channel page. Understanding location specific views would help you decide where should you focus to enhance the performance of your video.

3. Demographics

The demographics page helps you get YouTube insights, using them you can know the audience in a gender and location specific manner. For local businesses targeting a certain region, YouTube analytics would prove to be a boon. You can also know the geography and device used by the viewers with this feature. Understanding the gender and location of people will help you create dedicated product videos that would be helpful to them.

4. Traffic sources

Understanding the source of your YouTube video’s traffic would help you track the prominent keywords that viewers use for landing at your YouTube video. You can figure out their choice and their search patterns this way. The YouTube insights will show you whether the viewers found your video by searching YouTube, a channel on YouTube, through suggested videos, or an external link. The YouTube Analytics tool’s panel would assist you in finalizing the most beneficial traffic source for your brand. You can optimize your video and keyword strategy with this.

5. Audience Retention

This data explains how far your video has engaged your audience. Along with views, the duration that a viewer is on your video weighs too. From the audience retention page, you can find out the specific time that a viewer has exited your video and see what made them do so. There are 2 types of audience retention features – absolute audience retention and relative audience retention.

6. Devices

It is important to know which device is being used to watch the video. The metrics is distributed among mobile phones, computer, TV, tablet etc. you will be able to understand whether your video needs to be optimized for a certain video or not.

7. Likes and dislikes

YouTube insights gauge the audience acceptance for your video by the number of likes and dislikes. Videos with a huge number of like implies that it is loved by people, though, the quality of video can’t exactly be defined by the number of likes or dislikes. Even the best quality video created for asking opinions about a certain situation/issue might be good enough but still get dislikes.

8. Subscribers

YouTube analytics help you determine the engagement metrics to explain the origin of your subscribers. It includes both their geo-location, the date of subscription, and the source/medium they used to land with your video on YouTube. You can observe the number of people subscribing and unsubscribing from your YouTube channel.

The subscription stream enables your audience to get suggestions for new videos from your channel and offer better exposure to the service and products you offer.

You May Also Like : How to Get More Subscribers

9. Annotations

While considering YouTube Analytics, it is essential to understand that there are annotations to guide viewers to your business site for more content. It is not necessary that the content is video only, it might include a blog post as well. This will let you understand the click through rate and ‘close’ rates for every annotation. This in turn will assist you in optimizing how to reach your audience and where to place the annotations.

10. Comments

Audience engagement on any YouTube video can easily be gauged by using the vital aspect known as comments. Either it touched a chord in their heart, inspired or motivated them, or simply made them smile, the comments will say it all. Sometimes the audience simply taps ‘Like’ in place of commenting at their convenient.

11. Cards

Cards is a new feature in YouTube analytics and aimed at replacing annotations. This will improve user interactivity of any video and accelerate the engagement. They will act as call to action for informing visitors regarding playlists, videos, merchandising, fan funding, and associated website etc.

12. Sharing

This aspect sums up the amount of shares of the YouTube video across different social networks along with the share date. Google ranking is influenced with the share numbers, as higher the number more the chances of unique backlinks for your videos.

13. Videos in playlists

Favorites has been renamed to ‘Videos in playlists’. Your reach broadens as people keep marking your videos as favorites on their playlist. This is visible to the public on the YouTube channel itself.

How to analyze your competitors

Although, you can’t see the dashboard data of your competitor, there are still some ways to observe and study your competitors’ successful videos and from their views, favorites, ratings, and comments find out the driving force behind it.

For example, reading the comments and see what they are saying. Notice both the positive and negative ones so that you can incorporate the ideas in your videos. You can also make a better video by understanding what a specific demographic region is fond of watching in the said niche.

Or you can use those analyzing tools below to discover the more stats of your competitors.

1. InflueNex

InflueNex is a helpful influencer marketing tool for Analyzing, searching, and managing YouTubers. With the help of this YouTube analytics tool, you’re able to learn your competitors’ channels and videos with detailed information.

2. Rival IQ

This YouTube analytics tool helps you increase social media engagement, conduct competitive analysis to track competition, discovers new content ideas for your target audience. You can use it to leverage your foothold in YouTube.

3. SocialBlade

SocialBlade helps you gain YouTube insights and enables you to understand how your rival brands fare. You can learn from them and enhance your own strategy to beat them.

Read More to Get: 5 Methods to Go Frame by Frame on YouTube Video >>

Richard Bennett

Richard Bennett is a writer and a lover of all things video.

Follow @Richard Bennett

Best Practices for YouTube Card Implementation

How to Use YouTube Cards and Annotations?

Richard Bennett

Oct 26, 2023• Proven solutions

0

YouTube Annotations and Cards are both tools for linking viewers to your other videos or to off-YouTube webpages. Two of the major differences between them are:

Annotations are not clickable on mobile devices.

You cannot choose the size or positioning of Cards.

This article will teach you about both Cards and Annotations and discuss the best uses for each of them.

Part 1: Annotations

Annotations are messages that float overtop of your videos in the YouTube player. Usually, annotations are clickable and take users to other content created by you.

Section 1: Types of Annotations

There are five types of YouTube annotations:

Notes are colored boxes placed over the top of your videos.

Speech Bubbles look like dialogue boxes in a comic strip. They have tails that you can adjust so it looks like one of the people in your video is saying what is written in the annotation.

Spotlights have a subtle border and are completely clear inside. Your text only appears when a viewer’s cursor hovers over top of these annotations.

Labels are like spotlights except that viewers do not have to hover over them for your text to be visible.

Any of these annotations can be used to link viewers to other videos, or as subscribe links. You can also add a simple Title to your video through the Annotations menu.

Section 2: How to Use Annotations

*Note: the above video mentions Pause annotations, which are no longer available.

Here are two of the best uses for annotations:

Clickable End Cards / Outros

One of the best ways you can use spotlight annotations is to create clickable end cards for your videos.

When your video finishes playing the YouTube player will display a selection of suggested videos that might direct viewers away from your channel. You can keep more of these viewers watching your content by creating your own ‘suggested videos’ card and putting it at the end of your videos.

Put thumbnails of two or three of your other videos on your end card, or use ‘picture-in-picture’ to actually imbed footage from them. Then, after you upload your video, go in and place clickable spotlight annotations over top of your video thumbnails.

This is one use for annotations that cannot be duplicated with cards.

Promoting Your Videos

You should not wait until the end of your video to start linking viewers to other content. Many viewers will click away before they see your end card because your video is not exactly what they were looking for. By placing note or speech bubble annotations occasionally throughout your videos you can catch some of these people before they click off of your channel.

This works especially well if you link to videos on similar subjects to the one you are annotating.

Instead of just linking to another video of yours, try to link to that video on a playlist. Once a viewer is on a playlist your videos will auto-play after each other, which is good for both your view count and watch time.

You can also use the newer YouTube Cards for this, but Annotations might still be a better choice because viewers only need to click once vs. twice for Cards.

Try both and see which performs best for your channel. It might be in your best interest to keep on using both as they target different audiences – Cards are clickable on mobile devices, for example, but Annotations are not.

Part 2: YouTube Cards

YouTube Cards are newer than annotations and a lot of people believe they will one day replace Annotations. While there are benefits to Cards – like embedding images to represent your links – you cannot choose the shape, size, or placement of them. This means they have limited uses.

When viewers click on a Card they are shown additional information and a thumbnail representing the page they will be taken to if they choose to click again. This extra step could be either help viewers decide to click your links or give them a second chance to decide they would rather not.

Section 1: When to Use Cards

A linked Annotation is simply a call to action viewers can click on. A Card is a call to action as well, but instead of taking the viewer directly to where its link leads when it is clicked a Card opens up into a larger version of itself with a thumbnail image.

Crowdfunding pages (Patreon is a great choice for video creators), charity fundraising pages, and merchandise stores are all examples of links that benefit from the format of YouTube Cards.

When you link a viewer to a non-YouTube page you break up their session time, which negatively impacts your watch time and SEO ranking. You want to make sure that the viewers you are directing away from YouTube are the ones most likely to convert after they leave. By ‘convert’ we mean to contribute to your Patreon campaign, donate to the charity you are promoting, or buy some of your merchandise.

Giving viewers more information and a thumbnail through a Card can help ensure the most interested viewers are the ones clicking your links.

If you want to find a video editing solution that empowers your imagination and creativity yet takes less effort, please try this robust and user-friendly video editing software Filmora, which is equipped with its own footage stock Wondershare Filmstock and will definitely enhance your productivity and helps you to make money by making videos much easier.

Richard Bennett

Richard Bennett is a writer and a lover of all things video.

Follow @Richard Bennett

Richard Bennett

Oct 26, 2023• Proven solutions

0

YouTube Annotations and Cards are both tools for linking viewers to your other videos or to off-YouTube webpages. Two of the major differences between them are:

Annotations are not clickable on mobile devices.

You cannot choose the size or positioning of Cards.

This article will teach you about both Cards and Annotations and discuss the best uses for each of them.

Part 1: Annotations

Annotations are messages that float overtop of your videos in the YouTube player. Usually, annotations are clickable and take users to other content created by you.

Section 1: Types of Annotations

There are five types of YouTube annotations:

Notes are colored boxes placed over the top of your videos.

Speech Bubbles look like dialogue boxes in a comic strip. They have tails that you can adjust so it looks like one of the people in your video is saying what is written in the annotation.

Spotlights have a subtle border and are completely clear inside. Your text only appears when a viewer’s cursor hovers over top of these annotations.

Labels are like spotlights except that viewers do not have to hover over them for your text to be visible.

Any of these annotations can be used to link viewers to other videos, or as subscribe links. You can also add a simple Title to your video through the Annotations menu.

Section 2: How to Use Annotations

*Note: the above video mentions Pause annotations, which are no longer available.

Here are two of the best uses for annotations:

Clickable End Cards / Outros

One of the best ways you can use spotlight annotations is to create clickable end cards for your videos.

When your video finishes playing the YouTube player will display a selection of suggested videos that might direct viewers away from your channel. You can keep more of these viewers watching your content by creating your own ‘suggested videos’ card and putting it at the end of your videos.

Put thumbnails of two or three of your other videos on your end card, or use ‘picture-in-picture’ to actually imbed footage from them. Then, after you upload your video, go in and place clickable spotlight annotations over top of your video thumbnails.

This is one use for annotations that cannot be duplicated with cards.

Promoting Your Videos

You should not wait until the end of your video to start linking viewers to other content. Many viewers will click away before they see your end card because your video is not exactly what they were looking for. By placing note or speech bubble annotations occasionally throughout your videos you can catch some of these people before they click off of your channel.

This works especially well if you link to videos on similar subjects to the one you are annotating.

Instead of just linking to another video of yours, try to link to that video on a playlist. Once a viewer is on a playlist your videos will auto-play after each other, which is good for both your view count and watch time.

You can also use the newer YouTube Cards for this, but Annotations might still be a better choice because viewers only need to click once vs. twice for Cards.

Try both and see which performs best for your channel. It might be in your best interest to keep on using both as they target different audiences – Cards are clickable on mobile devices, for example, but Annotations are not.

Part 2: YouTube Cards

YouTube Cards are newer than annotations and a lot of people believe they will one day replace Annotations. While there are benefits to Cards – like embedding images to represent your links – you cannot choose the shape, size, or placement of them. This means they have limited uses.

When viewers click on a Card they are shown additional information and a thumbnail representing the page they will be taken to if they choose to click again. This extra step could be either help viewers decide to click your links or give them a second chance to decide they would rather not.

Section 1: When to Use Cards

A linked Annotation is simply a call to action viewers can click on. A Card is a call to action as well, but instead of taking the viewer directly to where its link leads when it is clicked a Card opens up into a larger version of itself with a thumbnail image.

Crowdfunding pages (Patreon is a great choice for video creators), charity fundraising pages, and merchandise stores are all examples of links that benefit from the format of YouTube Cards.

When you link a viewer to a non-YouTube page you break up their session time, which negatively impacts your watch time and SEO ranking. You want to make sure that the viewers you are directing away from YouTube are the ones most likely to convert after they leave. By ‘convert’ we mean to contribute to your Patreon campaign, donate to the charity you are promoting, or buy some of your merchandise.

Giving viewers more information and a thumbnail through a Card can help ensure the most interested viewers are the ones clicking your links.

If you want to find a video editing solution that empowers your imagination and creativity yet takes less effort, please try this robust and user-friendly video editing software Filmora, which is equipped with its own footage stock Wondershare Filmstock and will definitely enhance your productivity and helps you to make money by making videos much easier.

Richard Bennett

Richard Bennett is a writer and a lover of all things video.

Follow @Richard Bennett

Richard Bennett

Oct 26, 2023• Proven solutions

0

YouTube Annotations and Cards are both tools for linking viewers to your other videos or to off-YouTube webpages. Two of the major differences between them are:

Annotations are not clickable on mobile devices.

You cannot choose the size or positioning of Cards.

This article will teach you about both Cards and Annotations and discuss the best uses for each of them.

Part 1: Annotations

Annotations are messages that float overtop of your videos in the YouTube player. Usually, annotations are clickable and take users to other content created by you.

Section 1: Types of Annotations

There are five types of YouTube annotations:

Notes are colored boxes placed over the top of your videos.

Speech Bubbles look like dialogue boxes in a comic strip. They have tails that you can adjust so it looks like one of the people in your video is saying what is written in the annotation.

Spotlights have a subtle border and are completely clear inside. Your text only appears when a viewer’s cursor hovers over top of these annotations.

Labels are like spotlights except that viewers do not have to hover over them for your text to be visible.

Any of these annotations can be used to link viewers to other videos, or as subscribe links. You can also add a simple Title to your video through the Annotations menu.

Section 2: How to Use Annotations

*Note: the above video mentions Pause annotations, which are no longer available.

Here are two of the best uses for annotations:

Clickable End Cards / Outros

One of the best ways you can use spotlight annotations is to create clickable end cards for your videos.

When your video finishes playing the YouTube player will display a selection of suggested videos that might direct viewers away from your channel. You can keep more of these viewers watching your content by creating your own ‘suggested videos’ card and putting it at the end of your videos.

Put thumbnails of two or three of your other videos on your end card, or use ‘picture-in-picture’ to actually imbed footage from them. Then, after you upload your video, go in and place clickable spotlight annotations over top of your video thumbnails.

This is one use for annotations that cannot be duplicated with cards.

Promoting Your Videos

You should not wait until the end of your video to start linking viewers to other content. Many viewers will click away before they see your end card because your video is not exactly what they were looking for. By placing note or speech bubble annotations occasionally throughout your videos you can catch some of these people before they click off of your channel.

This works especially well if you link to videos on similar subjects to the one you are annotating.

Instead of just linking to another video of yours, try to link to that video on a playlist. Once a viewer is on a playlist your videos will auto-play after each other, which is good for both your view count and watch time.

You can also use the newer YouTube Cards for this, but Annotations might still be a better choice because viewers only need to click once vs. twice for Cards.

Try both and see which performs best for your channel. It might be in your best interest to keep on using both as they target different audiences – Cards are clickable on mobile devices, for example, but Annotations are not.

Part 2: YouTube Cards

YouTube Cards are newer than annotations and a lot of people believe they will one day replace Annotations. While there are benefits to Cards – like embedding images to represent your links – you cannot choose the shape, size, or placement of them. This means they have limited uses.

When viewers click on a Card they are shown additional information and a thumbnail representing the page they will be taken to if they choose to click again. This extra step could be either help viewers decide to click your links or give them a second chance to decide they would rather not.

Section 1: When to Use Cards

A linked Annotation is simply a call to action viewers can click on. A Card is a call to action as well, but instead of taking the viewer directly to where its link leads when it is clicked a Card opens up into a larger version of itself with a thumbnail image.

Crowdfunding pages (Patreon is a great choice for video creators), charity fundraising pages, and merchandise stores are all examples of links that benefit from the format of YouTube Cards.

When you link a viewer to a non-YouTube page you break up their session time, which negatively impacts your watch time and SEO ranking. You want to make sure that the viewers you are directing away from YouTube are the ones most likely to convert after they leave. By ‘convert’ we mean to contribute to your Patreon campaign, donate to the charity you are promoting, or buy some of your merchandise.

Giving viewers more information and a thumbnail through a Card can help ensure the most interested viewers are the ones clicking your links.

If you want to find a video editing solution that empowers your imagination and creativity yet takes less effort, please try this robust and user-friendly video editing software Filmora, which is equipped with its own footage stock Wondershare Filmstock and will definitely enhance your productivity and helps you to make money by making videos much easier.

Richard Bennett

Richard Bennett is a writer and a lover of all things video.

Follow @Richard Bennett

Richard Bennett

Oct 26, 2023• Proven solutions

0

YouTube Annotations and Cards are both tools for linking viewers to your other videos or to off-YouTube webpages. Two of the major differences between them are:

Annotations are not clickable on mobile devices.

You cannot choose the size or positioning of Cards.

This article will teach you about both Cards and Annotations and discuss the best uses for each of them.

Part 1: Annotations

Annotations are messages that float overtop of your videos in the YouTube player. Usually, annotations are clickable and take users to other content created by you.

Section 1: Types of Annotations

There are five types of YouTube annotations:

Notes are colored boxes placed over the top of your videos.

Speech Bubbles look like dialogue boxes in a comic strip. They have tails that you can adjust so it looks like one of the people in your video is saying what is written in the annotation.

Spotlights have a subtle border and are completely clear inside. Your text only appears when a viewer’s cursor hovers over top of these annotations.

Labels are like spotlights except that viewers do not have to hover over them for your text to be visible.

Any of these annotations can be used to link viewers to other videos, or as subscribe links. You can also add a simple Title to your video through the Annotations menu.

Section 2: How to Use Annotations

*Note: the above video mentions Pause annotations, which are no longer available.

Here are two of the best uses for annotations:

Clickable End Cards / Outros

One of the best ways you can use spotlight annotations is to create clickable end cards for your videos.

When your video finishes playing the YouTube player will display a selection of suggested videos that might direct viewers away from your channel. You can keep more of these viewers watching your content by creating your own ‘suggested videos’ card and putting it at the end of your videos.

Put thumbnails of two or three of your other videos on your end card, or use ‘picture-in-picture’ to actually imbed footage from them. Then, after you upload your video, go in and place clickable spotlight annotations over top of your video thumbnails.

This is one use for annotations that cannot be duplicated with cards.

Promoting Your Videos

You should not wait until the end of your video to start linking viewers to other content. Many viewers will click away before they see your end card because your video is not exactly what they were looking for. By placing note or speech bubble annotations occasionally throughout your videos you can catch some of these people before they click off of your channel.

This works especially well if you link to videos on similar subjects to the one you are annotating.

Instead of just linking to another video of yours, try to link to that video on a playlist. Once a viewer is on a playlist your videos will auto-play after each other, which is good for both your view count and watch time.

You can also use the newer YouTube Cards for this, but Annotations might still be a better choice because viewers only need to click once vs. twice for Cards.

Try both and see which performs best for your channel. It might be in your best interest to keep on using both as they target different audiences – Cards are clickable on mobile devices, for example, but Annotations are not.

Part 2: YouTube Cards

YouTube Cards are newer than annotations and a lot of people believe they will one day replace Annotations. While there are benefits to Cards – like embedding images to represent your links – you cannot choose the shape, size, or placement of them. This means they have limited uses.

When viewers click on a Card they are shown additional information and a thumbnail representing the page they will be taken to if they choose to click again. This extra step could be either help viewers decide to click your links or give them a second chance to decide they would rather not.

Section 1: When to Use Cards

A linked Annotation is simply a call to action viewers can click on. A Card is a call to action as well, but instead of taking the viewer directly to where its link leads when it is clicked a Card opens up into a larger version of itself with a thumbnail image.

Crowdfunding pages (Patreon is a great choice for video creators), charity fundraising pages, and merchandise stores are all examples of links that benefit from the format of YouTube Cards.

When you link a viewer to a non-YouTube page you break up their session time, which negatively impacts your watch time and SEO ranking. You want to make sure that the viewers you are directing away from YouTube are the ones most likely to convert after they leave. By ‘convert’ we mean to contribute to your Patreon campaign, donate to the charity you are promoting, or buy some of your merchandise.

Giving viewers more information and a thumbnail through a Card can help ensure the most interested viewers are the ones clicking your links.

If you want to find a video editing solution that empowers your imagination and creativity yet takes less effort, please try this robust and user-friendly video editing software Filmora, which is equipped with its own footage stock Wondershare Filmstock and will definitely enhance your productivity and helps you to make money by making videos much easier.

Richard Bennett

Richard Bennett is a writer and a lover of all things video.

Follow @Richard Bennett