The YouTube View Stats That Matters to Marketers

While YouTube analytics are essential in growing your views and subscribers, not all add value. Some metrics add more value than others. This is why it is necessary to understand the real stats that matter to impact your viewers and subscribers. In this article, we will take you through some of the stats that matter and also the vanity ones.

Importance of Checking YouTube Metrics

If you aren't sure if checking the YouTube view stats is essential, you need to consider your goal. By checking these stats, you can see the videos that work for your YouTube marketing and those that don't. The metric will help you plan your next video campaign since you will get insights into your video and channel performance. You can also use this data to determine if you are getting a return on your investment. 

Actionable vs. Vanity YouTube Channel's Statistic

YouTube metrics can be divided into two categories. These are:

Actionable Stats

Actionable stats clearly show how good or bad your channel is performing. These are metrics that are entirely tied to your business goal. They show you how your channel is performing and the areas for improvement. These stats are a good choice for tracking your YouTube channel's performance, goals, and objectives.

Since they are comparative, they are usually expressed as a ratio. For instance, checking the watch time will give you a clear picture of the time a viewer spends viewing your channel. For example, you might notice that certain types of videos command high watch time. Therefore, you can focus more on creating such types of videos.

Top 5 Actionable YouTube View Stats

Here are the critical actionable YouTube stats you should know about:

Watch Time

The watch time helps you understand the average number of hours watched for every video. Tracking this metric can help you understand the videos you should create and focus on. This is because a video with a high watch time indicates that the content resonates well with your viewers.

YouTube also considers videos with a high watch time to be of high-quality and more engaging. Therefore, the YouTube algorithm will likely recommend such videos over others with a lower watch time. The impact is that you will increase your YouTube subscribers, views, and even revenue.

Audience Retention

This metric shows the percentage of viewers watching or leaving the video at any given time. A high audience retention video gets many points from the YouTube algorithm compared to another with a low retention, as it indicates the video is capturing the audience's attention.

This is a good and actionable metric to track, as it can help inform your video strategy. If you notice a particular part of the video to be more engaging, you can use this as your topic for your next video. If certain parts of your videos have dips, check them to see what is boring your audience. You can then remove those elements in your current and future videos.

Demographic

These metrics show the people who are watching your videos. It's an actionable metric to show you how to reach your target audience. The audience watching your videos is usually divided according to age, gender, and geographical location.

If you aren't reaching your target audience, you can change your video strategy to cover the topics that interest your audience. To see your demographic on YouTube Studio, you can go to Analytics>Audience>Age & Gender.

Revenue

If your YouTube marketing goal is for viewers to take action, such as clicking on a link to your site, you should pay close attention to the revenue metrics as they will show you if your efforts are giving you good returns on investment. Some of the revenue-related metrics you can see on YouTube Analytics are:

• Total revenue
• Net profit
• Monthly estimated revenue
• Transaction numbers completed
• Top-earning videos
• Source of revenue
• Monetized playbacks.

Impressions Click-through Rate

This metric shows the number of viewers who click on the Play Button after seeing a video in their suggested videos or feeds. This metric shows how engaging your videos are. It can be a good measure of the effectiveness of your video titles and thumbnails.

For instance, if your video has 50,000 impressions and only 100 people click, it can be a sign that your video titles and thumbnails aren't compelling and may need reworking. It could be that the graphics elements you use are unappealing or the writings are ineligible.

Average Percentage Viewed

This statistic shows the average percentage of people who watch your video. For instance, if you had an eight-minute video, and your average percentage viewed was 25%, it means most of your viewers only watched your video for two minutes before abandoning it. This metric will show you how engaging your videos are and how long they maintain the viewer's attention.

A video or channel with a high average percentage view will rank better than another with a low number. This is because the YouTube algorithm will consider such content to be entertaining. Therefore, this is a key stat to consider to rank your YouTube channel better.

Real-Time Reporting

To know how to create stunning YouTube videos, you may need to collect data regularly to determine how well your videos perform. The real-time reporting shows you the number of views your videos get immediately after they are uploaded. This also allows you to compare your videos' views in the first 60 minutes to the first 48 hours.

When your video generates traffic during the first 48 hours, YouTube usually gives it a plus point and will recommend it to a bigger audience. On the other hand, a low number of views during the first 48 hours will cause the YouTube algorithm to overlook your videos.

Vanity Stats

As noted earlier, not all YouTube statistics are created equal. Some data only provide surface-level information, and many mislead you. The vanity statistics look good on paper. However, they do not provide valuable insights to help you make good decisions.

For instance, if you upload a video, and after a week, you receive thousands of views; this may look very good and leave you feeling excited. However, if you dig deeply, you might realize that many viewers only watch your video for a few seconds or minutes before abandoning it. That means the content may not resonate well with your viewers despite the thousands of views.

These numbers will look good, but they add little value to your channel. For instance, you can have a channel with 100k subscribers, but they aren't buying from you. That said, here are some of the metric statistics:

Views

Having many views will look good and leave you feeling excited. However, the true story is that many views mean your content looks good in the title and thumbnail. That is unless the views are backed up by actionable statistics.

YouTube usually shows an absolute number of views, including repeat views from the same users, which indicates that the data can sometimes be confusing. The data also doesn't show important metrics such as audience engagement or your content's reception. If you have a low average percentage viewed, such people will not even see your call to action.

Subscribers

In many cases, the success of a YouTube channel is judged by the number of subscribers. However, this vanity metric shouldn't impact decision-making if you are a YouTube marketer. This is because, in YouTube marketing, many subscribers doesn't mean you will have a high engagement rate or many people responding to your call to action.

Therefore, the subscriber metric does not show a true picture of YouTube marketing, especially because most subscribers don't even watch your new videos. On the other hand, when combined with other metrics, such as revenue, a growing number of subscribers can show that your content is leaving an impact.

Unique Viewers

Unique views are another vanity metric that shows the number of new viewers who have viewed your videos over time. Like the views, this metric will not provide insightful metrics such as conversion and engagement rate. However, you should note that unique views can show you the number of unique viewers compared to your number of subscribers. 

For instance, if you are getting many unique views, it indicates that your subscribers aren't watching your content. You must consider ways to keep your subscribers engaged, such as creating relevant content and optimizing videos. This will help you increase the number of YouTube views.

Final Thoughts

YouTube marketing requires you to understand the key metrics you should track. Otherwise, you can feel confused if you watch every metric on YouTube Studio. Luckily, with our guide, you now know the actionable stats you should keep an eye on and the vanity stats you should ignore. You can, therefore, use this data to grow your YouTube channel and revenue.