The following metrics can be used to analyse the performance of a video on YouTube:
- Number of views over time
The most important metric to determine the success of a video is the number of views the video has over time, as the videos are uploaded to be watched. YouTube Insights provides this metric at the bottom right of every video to give users and the source of the video a sense of its popularity. This metric can be used to determine what type of content resonates best with your audience.
Average number of views per video helps in getting a clear understanding of the video content which does well and guides future content creation. Video views need to be considered as the main determinant of any video’s success.
- Ratings (likes/dislikes)
Video ratings are another metric that illustrate direct viewer feedback. They are displayed at the bottom right hand corner of videos along with the 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, you simply need to click on the bar graph you see there. This helps compare likes, dislikes, comments and favourites of the video from its publication. Together with the total number of views of your 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 analyse the statistically significant sources of views. This information provides actionable insights into which marketing channels drive traffic to one’s videos over others and allows focussing of efforts. If one source of traffic draws more than another, then the video promotion strategy can be adjusted accordingly.
It is also beneficial to note the websites which embed our videos naturally. Embedding a video is the process of copying and pasting a YouTube video to be viewed on a website without having to view it in YouTube. We can note the websites that embed our YouTube videos and reach out to them. Additionally, they can be informed of a new video launch, so they can share it as well.
- Analyse audience demographics
To further analyse one’s video statistics further, 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. We can compare our viewer demographics for deeper insights into the growth of our audience over time and obtain ideas on segmenting our audience based on our video content. A video created to target a specific demographic should be monitored to ensure it’s reaching the right audience and thus, relevant viewers. This will help to make informed decisions for future content creation and marketing strategies.
- Viewer Dip-off
It is also important to understand one’s audience retention. Audience retention is how long our viewers watched our YouTube video. This will depend on many 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
It is similar to the significant discovery events section of YouTube Insights. The Traffic Sources section provides an in-depth look at each traffic source based on groupings by channel. One can segment by referrals from YouTube only, external to YouTube, via mobile apps and from direct traffic.
Segmentation allows analysing a traffic source of interest for promotion of other video content in the future. For instance, viewing video referrals from YouTube allows seeing the title of each video that drove traffic to the video under analysis. These insights help us to determine whether traffic from YouTube search or YouTube suggested videos is more important to our video promotion strategy.
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- 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.
