In an earlier blog post we covered how to integrate your YouTube web analytics into Google Analytics. To find out who is watching your videos and how you can generate more views and interactions you can turn to YouTube Analytics. Its reports tell you who your viewers are, where they are coming from, what they like and what content you should provide to make your channel successful. We tell you how to measure the performance of your videos and how to derive effective actions.
The reports in YouTube Analytics are divided into two categories: Views reports and Engagement reports. For each category, we will show you which reports you should use to best understand your YouTube performance.
Views Reports
Views: The views per video are an important metric to measure the success of your content. In this report’s table, you will find the most viewed videos. Find common elements in these videos to create more successful content.
Demographics: This report will help you better understand your audience. It provides information on the age and gender of your viewers. Make sure this reported data matches your target audience.
Playback Locations: You should also be aware where your videos are being played. This gives you a better understanding on how viewers have found your videos. This report tells you how many views were generated on other websites (embedded videos) and on YouTube directly. By clicking on “Embedded player on other websites”, you will see the views by domain.
Traffic Sources: This report provides information on how viewers have found your content or how they have been made aware of it (links to the videos – not to be confused with Playback locations). You will learn which sources are important to you and which ones hold untapped potential.
Audience Retention: To improve views of your videos sustainably, you should identify weaknesses in your existing content in order to avoid repeating these problems when creating new videos. You will find these by looking for significant drop-offs of viewers (many people stopping watching the video). Analyze these parts to find possible reasons for this behavior.
Engagement Reports
Subscribers: The number of subscribers of your YouTube channel is an important indicator with which to measure your success. Find content that leads to many new subscriptions, analyze that content and then use these insights to optimize new videos.
Likes and Dislikes and Favorites: These ratings tell you whether your audience likes your content or not. Pay special attention to dislikes and combine the data with other key metrics (e.g. traffic sources) to find possible causes for these interactions. Another reason to keep track of this metric is the impact of likes, dislikes and favorites on your ranking in YouTube search results.
Sharing: Social media may have a big influence on the reach of your videos. That is why you should be aware on which social networks your videos are being shared. Additionally, you can drill down into this data by country and date.
With these tips you can measure your success on YouTube. Using YouTube Analytics, you will be able to identify the content most liked by your audience and can focus on creating more like it.
Do you have questions regarding YouTube Analytics or web analytics in general? Do not hesitate to write me an e-mail.
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