Metrics that Can Be Used to Analyze The Performance of a Video on Youtube

Number of Views Over Time

An important metric used to determine the success of a video is the number of views the video has received over time. YouTube Insights provides this metric at the bottom right of every video to give both users and source a sense of its popularity. This metric can help to determine what type of content resonates best with one’s audience. Average number of views per video helps to obtain a clear understanding of the video content which does well and guides future content creation. Video views need to be considered as the main factor of any video’s success.

Ratings (likes/dislikes)

Video ratings are another metric that demonstrate direct viewer feedback. They are displayed at the bottom right hand corner of videos along with video views. Here, we can see the number of likes or dislikes the video has received over time. For an in-depth view of these ratings, one needs to click on the bar graph. This helps compare likes, dislikes, comments and favorites of the video from its publication. Along with the total number of views of ones’ video, ratings can help to determine what video content is liked or disliked by one’s audience. Ratings feedback is often a better indication of engagement as compared to just views, as ratings require more action from one’s audience than simply watching one’s content. Feedback in the form of likes or dislikes can help our search rankings, as YouTube takes these factors into account when deciding our videos’ rank in the search results.

Discovery Events

An understanding of how traffic was driven to one’s YouTube videos is essential to understand how to drive relevant viewers to our videos in the future. This information can be accessed by clicking on the same bar graph icon at the bottom right of most YouTube videos. It shows the significant discovery events; i.e., the major referral sources of viewers to a video. The listing of major referral sources allows one to analyses significant sources of views. This information provides actionable insights into which marketing channels drive traffic to one’s videos over others and allows focusing of efforts. If one source of traffic draws more than another, then the video promotion strategy can be adjusted accordingly. It is desirable to note the websites which embed our videos. Embedding a video is posting a YouTube video to be seen on a site without viewing it in YouTube. We can note and reach out to the websites that embed our YouTube videos. They can be informed of a new video launch, so they can share it as well.

Analyze Audience Demographics

To further analyze one’s video statistics, one can click on the view more statistics button to get more extensive analytics about the video. Better understanding of audience demographics will help with future content creation to make it as relevant as possible for the age, gender and geographical location of the viewership. Viewer demographics can be compared for deeper insights into the audience growth over time and obtain ideas on segmenting audience based on video content. A video created to target a specific demographic should be monitored to ensure it’s reaching the right audience and relevant viewers.

Viewer Dip-off

It is also important to understand one’s audience retention. Audience retention is how long our viewers watched our YouTube video. It depends on factors including the video’s length, content, and quality, among others. Audience retention metrics need to be examined to understand where one’s viewers stopped watching their videos. This aspect of YouTube insights is very beneficial as it allows us to watch our video while viewing where viewers stopped watching at the same time. This helps to discover weaknesses in one’s video content and help prevent occurrence of same issues in the future. For instance, if all of the viewers appear to stop watching the video halfway through, the following questions can be asked: Was the video too long? Was the content irrelevant to viewers? Is the video not engaging enough or is it boring? They may help solve problems regarding drop in viewership.

Track Traffic Sources

This section provides in-depth look at each traffic source based on groupings by channel. One can segment the traffic sources, which allows analyzing a traffic source of interest for promotion of other video content in the future. These insights help us to determine whether traffic from YouTube search or YouTube suggested videos is more important to our video promotion strategy.

Sharing Statistics

One of the ways a video goes viral is through sharing on social media channels. Thus, the use of sharing report in video analytics is necessary to identify which of the videos are shared the most. This can help to figure out why some videos are more popular on social media channels than others, and this information can be used in future videos. YouTube annotations can be used to drive viewers to perform actions such as sharing on Facebook or Twitter.

Encourage Subscriber Engagement

We need to monitor trends in our subscriber base to understand the overall reach of our YouTube content and ensure continued interest of our viewers in future. Subscriber report can help obtain better sense of the subscribers lost or gained on a video-by-video basis. Also, utilizing calls to action in the form of annotations can help in gaining subscribers. This is beneficial as more subscribers will imply more potential viewers. This report should be monitored on a video-by-video basis to identify any trends in subscriber loss or gain.