Youtube Analytics

YouTube offers a wide variety of great analytics to look into for your video based needs.  The best way to get an overall feel for any trends is to first set your analytics timeline to lifetime.  This lets you look at everything from the very start of your account.  While it gives you a broad perspective, it can be a great way to see if there are any significant peaks or lows in your account.  Your dashboard gives you your watch time in minutes, average view duration in minutes, and your views as the three biggest metrics.  There are others you can look at too, such as likes and comments.

One of my favorite metrics to look at is the top 10 videos.  This also gives you the average watch time and likes, but if you click on the video, you get so many more metrics!  When you click on a video, my favorite thing to look at is the top geographies that are watching your video.  For example, I made a video about how to make Sangrias Blancas without alcohol, and the top countries that have watched the video are the United States, Mexico, and Spain.  What I think is interesting is that you can also see each and every country that has watched the video.  While there are a lot of Latin American countries that have watched it, Chile has an average of 100% watch time rate.  This means that all the people in Chile actually watched the entire video.  Compared to the United States (which was one of the top countries that viewed it) whose viewers only watch an average of 55% of the video.

This is a great way to track what videos do well, and which need improving.  What videos are successful?  Is there a trending topic in these successful videos?  What videos are not doing well?  At what time do viewers drop off?  Is the video related to their searches?  Interpreting what makes a video successful can have a huge impact on your future videos, as well as the reach your videos you have.