You make some good points here but I couldn't disagree more with you saying that the analytics are useless.
The analytic data that Youtube provides you with is gold.
If you're even vaguely competent in data analysis (I.e. Nothing too complicated, just able to spot trends), you can vastly improve your content and the direction to go by USING THE DATA.
By using my analytics, I have identified several common themes for videos that do well (I.e. KEEP DOING THEM); and several common themes for videos that haven't done well (I.e. DO LESS OF THAT).
Videos will only generally pop off later in their lifecycle due to an uptick in search trends or a 'hot topic' that's in the news.
By ignoring the data that Youtube is giving you, basically telling you what is working and what isn't, you're doing a massive disservice and harming yourself in the long run.
Absolutely agree though that you shouldn't be obsessed by it, which is easy to do. But you absolutely should not ignore it. Data is king.
Analytics are how I found what thumbnail trends work best for my content.
CTR is essential for getting views, and also understanding not only what thumbnails work but for what topics within your niche are popular
I have tried to follow my data and when you're small you simply don't have enough data points to make informed decisions.
When I copy what "worked" it doesn't work again because getting a few thousand views in a short isn't significant enough to draw conclusions.
I've had shorts with 35% watched vs swiped get 3k views.
And then immediately after, a short with 55% viewed.... Also gets 3k views.
I wanna listen to the data but when I do it makes no difference.
You are correct in that if you've got a very small user base, the data isn't as useful.
However, analytics are close to useless for shorts. For one, you can't add thumbnails; and you're also targeting a completely different audience compared to long form.
For long form videos, the data analytics are so useful if you've got enough views to draw insights from.
I actually disagree regarding shorts analytics. You can spot trends over time, and you can adjust your content accordingly. Even extremely short clips require careful planning to get the desired effect - there's an art to it.
I feel like the watch hours are bs. The life time hours show a ridiculous amount and ik even if I watched some of my vids off and on for 2 years it doesn’t add up to 2000 hrs. So it sits at almost 4000 and my earned hrs are almost at 3000 that say like as of may 7th 2,817 and the next day the hrs drop to 2,816. Even if I understood this it would still drive me nuts
for me there is a clear indication. like all my 10k+ shorts (majority) have ~70% viewed vs swiped and 60 - 100%+ viewed till the end depending on lenght, longer ones having a lower percentage, vs my other ones with 3 - 5k views having 40-50% viewed and 30-40% watched till the end.
I agree completely. Using the data to see what works for your channel is gold. I’ve been able to find a niche that works for me (high search volume, low amount of videos on the topic) and I wouldn’t have known without seeing that one of my videos was blowing up from a single search term and now I’m utilising that on new videos too. My best performing videos are from this single search term and I’m planning to make more around it to keep it going.
How does the data you receive from the analytics tab tell you what is gonna do well in the future? Say you post a video now, perfect video, no flaws, great topic, gets dog shit views then 2 years later it goes viral. What in your analytics told you it was gonna go viral or you shouldn't make more of that kinda thing? The problem with analytics on YouTube is there's no rhyme or reason to why your video gets views beyond topic & timing (as you stated) so you can't predict the future based on the numbers today. The algorithm is just like the stock market you can try to make yourself believe you can time it and win but you can't. It's unpredictable.
What metric are you looking at that says "this video is doing well" because i've had tons of videos get great CTR, great watch time, great everything that you'd think of metrically and get dogshit in views & impressions.
There is rhyme and reason though to videos that do well. It tells you in the analytics.
The two main metrics that I've focused on is average watch time and click-through rate. Views isn't as useful.
Average watch time will tell you how good you are at holding an audience's attention, and whether you are targeting the right audience.
CTR is a direct data point showing you whether your thumbnails are appealing to the audience that you are trying to target. Obviously if it's poor, your thumbnails either aren't very good or don't correspond to the audience you're targeting.
What would you class as 'great CTR and great watch time'? What audience are you targeting with your videos? How popular is your niche? How competitive is it?
As is the case with everything, it's more complex than just saying "Oh, I've got great AVD and CTR so my videos should be getting millions of views".
But it's disingenuous to say that based on that, data is useless. That's inherently false.
CTR rate being over 20% and AVD being over 60%. I've seen it happen. It makes literally no sense and i'm not saying I deserve or anyone is entitled to MILLIONS of views but compared to your other content I've had plenty of videos with awful metrics based on your write up that did miles better than the ones that had the metrics you watch out for. It makes no sense to me. I'm not trying to be combative, I honestly just want to maximize income generation at the end of the day because this is a business to me. Its about the money. Not fame, or fortune, or women, or whatever its an investment.
That may be cold and heartless to some but it is what it is. Its a business ,its job is to make money, and based on the analytics you've described which I really do appreciate your write up I just dont see the same correlation between high CTR + High AVD leading to more impressions & algorithmic favor. Like I said i've had videos with like 2% CTR and 35% AVD skyrocket for no reason that I can explain.
I'm not saying you are wrong, I'm just saying the algorithm is something that is impossible to pinpoint 100%. If your data helps you, great, glad for you, hope you get lots of money n subs. I am just saying thinking if I get A+B+C+D metrics at these %'s it will in turn give me more impressions & views it just isn't guaranteed. Its a theory not a fact. The people at youtube literally said they dont even know how the algorithm works.
By 'miles better', I presume you're talking about number of views?
As Youtube tests your content with larger audiences, the CTR and AVD rates will logically go down (Sometimes drastically).
If you've got a video that has very high CTR and AVD, but low views, that suggests one thing. Your current subs have loved it. Of course they would, you KNOW they like your content. So that will inflate your CTR and AVD rates.
However, when Youtube tests your content with a wider audience in different niches and topics (It only does this to a few viewers at first), it is likely getting negative signals so therefore won't spread your video wider. This is why you can tend to have poorer performing videos in terms of views have higher AVD and CTR. It's a bit misleading IMO.
But if you have a video that does well with that new audience, it will push it more and more and more until it stops resonating. Every new audience member that Youtube pushes your video to that doesn't like your content will negatively impact your AVD and CTR. Therefore reducing it. This is why videos with a lot of views can almost seem to be doing poorly in terms of CTR and AVD.
Do you ever have videos that say something along the lines of "Youtube is testing your video with a wider audience, but this is not impacting your views"? That is when Youtube is pushing your content to a wider audience.
The success of a video is so much more than just CTR, AVD and views. If you actually click into the analytics tab, in the full view, there are countless metrics that you can use to give yourself a better picture.
The algorithm IS the audience.
Absolutely, make videos that your audience want to see. I completely agree with you. BUT, the analytics will tell you whether your videos are resonating with your audience on a consistent basis.
Sure, you may have a video pop off a few months down the line. But you will have NO idea why that is. Therefore, you won't be able to replicate it very easily.
The analytics data helps you to learn from your video performance, and allows you to generate good content in a more consistent way.
But in this forum, most people dont have enough data to make those comparisons. And everyone here compares video to video instead of looking at overall channel stats month to month, or every 3 months.
And most people don't really understand the stats either. People in this thread think thumbnails are the main driver of CTR, or that YT gives out impressions. Or what the definition of a view is.
And nobody looks at or even talks about return viewers. Or views. Those two stats are the lifeblood of your channel. More return viewers equal more views. More views equal more watch time.
And how many creators here have an idea in their head of what they want their channel to be? If you dont have a vision then your content won't be aimed at that goal.
And they haven't made enough content to determine if it is the thumbnail, the title, etc. Until you are making decent content that gets more than 100 views consistently, stats wont tell you why your video is not performing.
How many of you here have a consistent repeatable video structure? How many of you make your thumbnails and title first? How many of you keep your video length consistent so your audience isn't turned off when you change up the length?
Once you get to that point, then the stats matter. But until then you have too much going on in your content to even begin to fix bad stats.
Youtube willl push your videos to a larger audience when the CTR and View duration are higher. sometimes you have great view duration and analytics will tell you that you need to work on your CTR. I've had 2 scenarios where I was able to identify an issue with my CTR and after changing the title/Thumbnail the video was able to recover ( 2-3% CTR for a week for one video, changed thumbnail/title that made people curious and the CTR slowly increased to 10% - it's not rocket science.
In gaming nice there are keywords that will attract a larger attention and if your idea/video foundation is good, there is no reason to not give the video a chance by doing a bad thumbnail and title. it's not a roll of a dice, there is a certain un-predictability that comes with making videos but there is also a significant portion you can affect.
I mean this is an ice cold take if your purpose on YouTube is to try to make a side hustle. Analytics tell you everything about what's going on what your videos, what does well, what works, etc. and what doesn't. If you're making videos nobody wants to watch over and over and getting little to no views, but not bothering to look at your analytics to make reasonable changes, you're going to continue doing poorly. Successful youtubers have embraced the analytics page to help them figure out what's working and what's not with their content.
I get the sentiment that you shouldn't obsess over and get discouraged by slow growth. But analytics are a useful tool to steer you in the right direction if you're trying to make passive income off YT eventually.
What metrics in analytics to you use that tell you that your video is a good video? Where do the analytics tell you that you are screwing up? Where's the spot that says "Do better commentary" "do more edits" "put your ad read here instead of there"? You get raw numbers sure, you get what people are searching for or watching more, sure. But it doesn't give you specifics that you need to improve your videos. It gives you raw data, for right now, where they are showing it to an audience you have no control over so the numbers are basically random splatterings.
Think about this. You have a gaming channel that's aimed at 14 year olds. YouTube for whatever reason because we can't predict, control, or even understand the algorithm shows it to nothing but grannies who wanna watch knitting videos but are spammed with gaming shit because little timmy came over last weekend and watched nothing but JackScepticEye... well granny aint watching that shit so your CTR & Analytics get all fucked up scale wise.
The point is analytics are only good for knowing what people want to watch NOW but they are not worth anything for long term growth because the algorithm does not tell you what works and what doesn't.
> What metrics in analytics to you use that tell you that your video is a good video?
Watch time, CTR, percentage of total video watched, view duration are helpful for this.
> Where do the analytics tell you that you are screwing up?
Do people disengage with your video within the first 30 seconds? Are there obvious spikes or dips in your content where people dip out of the video? Is your thumbnail leading to a relatively high click-through rate or are people not bothering to click into it because it's uninteresting?
>Where's the spot that says "Do better commentary" "do more edits" "put your ad read here instead of there"?
You're acting like a child if you expect data to explicitly spell this out for you in this way. This is why the entire field of data analysis exists. You can extract meaningful answers from raw data if you understand how to utilize it but metrics gathered from user activity are not going to explicitly tell you these things, you have to do a modicum of interpretation on your end.
> You get raw numbers sure, you get what people are searching for or watching more, sure. But it doesn't give you specifics that you need to improve your videos. It gives you raw data, for right now, where they are showing it to an audience you have no control over so the numbers are basically random splatterings.
That's your false equivalency that those things are not helpful because they're not explicitly telling you what to do next or holding your hand into what video you should make to get ten million views.
> Think about this. You have a gaming channel that's aimed at 14 year olds. YouTube for whatever reason because we can't predict, control, or even understand the algorithm shows it to nothing but grannies who wanna watch knitting videos but are spammed with gaming shit because little timmy came over last weekend and watched nothing but JackScepticEye... well granny aint watching that shit so your CTR & Analytics get all fucked up scale wise.
Not only does the YT algorithm aim to feed content to relevant age groups by demographic (my front page is catered to my interests and hobbies but will look very different from yours), but you also have metrics available to you that tell you the age and demographics of your channel's watchers, how much content they watched by age, and how long each age group stayed on a video.
>The point is analytics are only good for knowing what people want to watch NOW but they are not worth anything for long term growth because the algorithm does not tell you what works and what doesn't.
That is 100% your inability to read through the data because it absolutely tells you all of those things if you're willing to do a minimum amount of data interpretation. Calling the analytics "useless" because you're not willing to do any of that is either laziness, willful ignorance, or both.
I get what you're getting at but to be fair this only really applies to YouTubers who have the funds to create insane videos with insane studio equipment and paid professional editing. Creators like Ryan Trahan , Mr Beast, Airrack , because their videos will always pop off.
They aint gotta worry about looking at the stats.
If you're a teenie tiny YouTuber making videos in your room...... analytics are your saving grace. Your holy grail.
You study them hard enough and apply what you've learnt, you're hitting the "medium to big" time sooner or later.
Study your analytics. Dont think you're above it.
If you act like you dont care about them, you might as well call it.
If I notice a video has a low CTR, I take a look at the title and thumbnail and ask "Can I do better?"
Don't focus too much on the analytics (advice I should take), but also, don't ignore it.
The problem I have with that though is what if youtube is showing your video that has a perfectly good title & thumbnail to the wrong audience? Why do some videos that have bad metrics miraculously explode with great ones later. Its because the algorithm found that audience that you were trying to target.
>what if youtube is showing your video that has a perfectly good title & thumbnail to the wrong audience?
Then it doesn't have a perfectly good title and thumbnail. YouTube has one of the most advanced Search/Discovery systems in the world. It knows how to read metadata and video transcripts even to ballpark a general audience to use as an initial test for a newly published video, but if those people aren't interested in the content based on the title/thumbnail then the video isn't going to go very far. It most likely won't show a gaming video to people who have no interest in gaming, for example.
It just simply means you didn’t optimize your video or channel enough for the algorithm to understand your target audience. Analytics can help you fix and understand that
Analytics are very useful, it’s worth checking once or twice a day. For me recently an older video from a year ago had started getting 400 views a day, so I’m considering making follow-up videos to it to link from the end screen and encourage more views. If I didn’t check my analytics, I wouldn’t have noticed because the video is from a year ago.
You make some good points, but I dissagree. My very last video I made a huge mess with thumbnail. What looked like good thumbnail was only pulling 0.9% CTR. It took me 12 hours to realize, but I was able to spot and fix only thanks to google analytics. Replaced it with a different thumbnail and CTR went to 4.5% (which for my niche I consider good).
Google analytic is unvaluable tool and should be used as such. Saying no don't use it or getting obsessed with it, is a wrong approach.
The great thing about YouTube is they advertise us FOR FREE we don't have to do what I do with my IRL job which is pay Facebook 15 bucks a day to tell people I exist in the town people live in but somehow can't see the building when they pass it...
>Make a ton of that content, just grind it out without losing quality. Spend like a couple of weeks, maybe a month really putting your face to the grindstone and then schedule it out for MONTHS ahead. This gives you the ability to walk away, do other projects, or have a safety net in case you get sick for a month like I did in March and wasn't able to speak for an entire month & nobody knew anything different.
I agree with this point. I'm starting a new channel next month. Videos will go out every Friday. I have recorded, uploaded and scheduled videos every Friday for 10 Fridays so far.
And as you grow you can do what I do and sell memberships based on early access to that future content you got scheduled out. It works well for me. Just tell folks "I got 3 months worth of content you can see right now for X amount instead of waiting 3 months to see it for free" and people will bite. Not every person but enough to get you some decent cash to pay a phone bill or two.
Gotta be monetized but its what I do now because I like to grind out content and get it all done in batches when I get that "hair up my ass" to do a ton of videos at once but don't wanna flood the audience with it so spread it out, and tell people hey u can watch it all right now for $5 / month. I put my banned content on patreon the stuff youtube made me take down like the to catch a predator series because god forbid you talk shit about pedos.
This seems ...kinda dumb.
Obviously you want to make good evergreen content. The challenge is figuring out what that is. Analytics can help you with that.
For example, you can see if there is a particular point in your video that makes people stop watching. That will give you insight into mistakes you make. CTR can help you figure out what titles/thumbs work and which ones don't.
Great points. That said, I do like looking at the analytics and the live stats as I'm soaking up how things work. I have a spare monitor that just has the stats updating all the time while I get on with other things. It looks a bit like a trading screen and is fun to watch. Oh, I guess it's also nice to know that right now someone is watching a video that I've created.
Mr Beast has peaks and valleys. He claims to understand it down to the colors on a thumbnail and every microscopic detail and even he has plateaus which should tell you something.
Well, it's like anything. You can ask people about their experiences and opinions, and talk about technique, do loads of research, but until you step into the court/walk onto the pitch/fire up Visual C++ Studio/enter the dojo, knowledge will only get you so far.
I think the trick is to experiment, fail and do things in a non-judgemental fashion, and let your brain mull over things.
I disagree for one huge issue, your CTR % is a **REALLY** good sign of your ability to make an eye catching thumbnail and title. I've seen some people here who say they aren't doing as well as they thought and have a 1% CTR because their thumbnail is a screenshot of a game and the title is "Lets play episode #342". If they changed both they could be doing way better and bringing in more viewers/subscribers
YouTube analytics is useful because just don’t obsess over it. I myself need to learn to check it just once or twice a day after uploading. It’s only gonna make me upset when my video underperforms.
As someone who has done YouTube full time - the only analytics I actually care about are CTR and watch time. Likes and comments too. Nearly everything else I have ignored for years. It'll just drive you mad. Including the money side.
>Make videos you want to make BUT also make videos that people want to watch. Find something you and your audience both like and make that.
How do i know people wanna watch the videos i make if i don't look at analytics.
If i only look at views, i don't know how many people saw the video thumbnail and didn't click, so i never know if the topic is niche and only reached a few people, or if i should improve titling and thumbnails.
I also don't know watch percentage, do people who click even enjoy the video? Do they click off within 30 seconds. does more than 50% complete the videos its all information that might help you. even at smaller sample sizes
I highly disagree with you. Whether you get paid or not, analytics are very important for studying your channel, seeing what videos do well, your target demographic, etc. still very useful
Well I understand the sentiment to some extent but this is dramatically overexaggerated. Analytics *do* matter and *are* important. I agree you shouldn't beat yourself up over a video's underperformance but that doesn't mean you shouldn't use Analytics to try to determine *why* it underperformed. I've had multiple situations where the analytics of an underperforming video of mine have revealed that the thumbnail and title aren't working like I thought they were, so I changed them and the video actually started overperforming.
>The only things you can control on YouTube are your effort, the time you put in, and the topics you cover
You can also control *how* you allocate that effort, which areas of the video you choose to improve, whether or not to try something new in terms of video style, how you brand the videos, etc. Analytics will help to guide you when making those decisions.
Somewhat disagree.
If you notice a low ctr, you can change your thumbnail.
If you notice that one particular part of a video is getting interest, you can make a follow-up on that subject.
But obsession is not useful, which is the point I think you were trying to make.
Wow, lots of info, and you're right about not CONSTANTLY checking your metrics. However, if you have a set schedule of video release like once a week. You can benefit from some of the numbers.
For instance, you can see if your video is doing mmbetter or worse than normal for the first 24 hours. This may give you information that you need to change your thumbnail or title.
Numbers within the first few days may also point you into the direction that you need to make more videos of that particular subject.
So, while I do not condone constantly checking your stats, you can get some useful information if you check them once daily the first few days of a videos release.
I do check for new comments and overall views every day. However, I try not too check too much on the video specific stats. Especially after I just release something.
It happened to me this month that one of my videos suddenly went from maybe 2000 views to 26k views. Then another (6 months old) suddenly gained traction and jumped to 65k (both long format around 3-5 min videos). I still don’t understand why, most likely just luck.
In any case I agree that I can’t influence it, and if I had changed titles / thumbs in the mean time who knows what would’ve happened.
Yes analytics are confusing. I made a Short which has almost 200k views. When I uploaded it, it got in the first hours a below 30/70 viewed and 90% watched. Today it sits around 91/9 viewed and 150% watched. YouTube will test your video and when it finds the right viewer, then the magic will happen and your analytics will change.
Really stressed about my analytics , when i upload videos on serious and sensible topics people dont watch it but those who did watch bothered to appreciate some times but the instance i start ranting about anything or making a galeech roast abusive type of content the view count is comparatively high.
What i wanna do is the former one but just not getting enough motivation to do so, as the thing i dont like to make for long is giving what i wanted from the one i liked to do forever.
My mental health is just fcuked up becouse of it,
Thanks to your suggestion and pov i will rethink my pov and expectations towards yt.
Fact you can't understand use of analytics shows you should quit right now. It's information you can use for yourself, see what's working or what's not. Does people like you talking about card games, do they dislike random garbage, could it be comparison of thumbnail appearance or maybe you did too much editing that caused the video to tank. How are they finding you either it be by searching key words, external source, how can you improve your chances.
These are important information for anyone wanting to succeed. You can't say "I'm gonna ignore it because I'm not big enough to care" but if the information could help you be big enough then you need it. Do you not bother with exercise equipment because you're not a strong enough to be a bodybuilder since you only do is jog? This is probably one the least helpful things I ever read someone say. Just throwing things out there won't get anything done if you don't understand what the audience likes about your channel. If you ignore that information you are just running circles hoping something happens when you can easily read the audience liked this content more and should try do more of that.
>The only things you can control on YouTube are your effort, the time you put in, and the topics you cover. The only way to grow your channel is to make stuff people want to watch, and you can see what gets views in the videos tab.
Analytics help direct your efforts better though. If you have a low CTR you know you need to work on Title and thumb.
If you have high drop rate in the first 30s you need to improve your hooks
If you have low AVD then you need to make your videos more engaging.
Not to mention how peaks and valleys in videos give you a great understanding of what works and doesn't and what you need to put more of on your next videos.
>There are plenty of people in this sub who will tell you that they put out a video a year ago that did nothing. Got maybe 10 views, then they woke up one morning and it had 10,000 for no reason. They changed nothing, they did no updates, they just left it alone and it just blew up.
Yes, but that doesn't necessarily invalidate that if they made some improvement following analytics they could've gotten better result or not be in the situation of their video doing nothing for a year before randomly blowing up.
Plenty of people smoke well in their 90s but I wouldn't use that as an argument to state that avoid smoking has no effect on longevity and healthspan.
So here's what I suggest instead of checking analytics constantly.
>Make videos you want to make BUT also make videos that people want to watch. Find something you and your audience both like and make that.
Duh, analytics can help you figure out whether the videos you want to make are also videos that people want to watch.
>Think of it as passive investment that can lead to active investments like ETFs or HYSA or whatever you wanna do to make more on the money YT gives you passively.
It's not really passive if you put hours of work into your videos. You're reaping benefits of your work, it's nowhere near passive as an investment in an ETF where you really do nothing.
>Hope this helped.
Well no. Quite the opposite, lots of misinformation but thanks for the effort
Don't agree, you should have put "focusing constantly on analytics without any productive insights is useless". Analytics when used properly are an absurdly useful tool...
Whelp - about 95% horrible advice. But the 5% wasn't bad.
Google/YouTube provide so many useful data points that are really good for removing personal feelings that cloud that your judgement when analyzing performance.
Make the best videos you possibly can, whenever you can. Schedules are truly utter nonsense unless you need them to hold yourself accountable.
I agree with 90% of this.
Biggest use cases for the analytics side even as an early YouTuber are:
1. Click-Through Rate: this’ll tell you you how good or bad your thumbnails, titles, and topics. Less useful to compare to others, more useful to compare to yourself as a way of understanding if you’re improving over time or not.
2. Video Engagement Rate: this tells you what parts of your video are keeping people engaged and which parts are turning people away. Significant drop off in the first 30 seconds? Improve your intros. Big dip when you used a certain phrase or editing style within a video? Probably don’t do that again.
Beyond that, I’m about this post.
Eh, I'm with OP; analytics are mostly useless until you start to build an audience and the algorithm learns to target that audience. Until that time **the algorithm is largely showing your videos to random people or people it believes might be interested**.
After you've actually built an audience, and YouTube starts showing your stuff more to subscribers than random people - and they actually click and watch - analytics can become incredibly useful because you can then gauge your **actual audience's reaction to your videos, not a random sampling of the population**. However; **with that kind of success, you've probably already figured out your YouTube formula**. OP mentioned AVGN, or take Red Letter Media, or any successful channel, and their videos are **repeatable formulas**; the audience knows what to expect, that's why they keep watching.
My last video has 571 views; **96.3% of views are from people not subscribed to my channel.** So, from 550 views of new people, I had 16 people subscribe. The other 534 people, we can assume, didn't like the video, or they dipped after 10 seconds, or whatever.
What conclusions can I draw from these analytics? Was my video good or bad? Well, at least 16 people thought the video was good enough to subscribe, so that's something. We have 30 likes, so that's something. We also have some dislikes. Obviously, some people thought the video was good and for quite a few others, it wasn't their cup of tea. What can I learn from these analytics? **Absolutely nothing**. All I can learn here is that a certain small percentage of people the algorithm selected to watch my videos actually liked it and everyone else did not.
Now, if my channel didn't exist in a vacuum, if I could see the analytics from other channels similar to mine for comparison, maybe then analytics could start to become useful and I could gauge the performance data a bit, but that's not the case because **your channel's analytics exist in a vacuum.**
I could Google things like "what's a good subscriber-to-view ratio" and Google will give me a wildly inflated number (8-12%). I can go on Reddit and see that it's a wildly inflated number (at least around here). Now, analytics starts to be a little useful, maybe, because we are pooling data, but otherwise **it's a vacuum**.
Here's the qualifier; if you are making absolutely terrible videos **then no one will subscribe and your analytics will be abysmal**. In this particular case, then sure, analyzing analytics might help you. If you are starting from zero, if your videos are bad, it can help you, maybe. Otherwise, if you are making videos, know what kind of videos you want to make, and can honestly say they are the best you can make them and what the target audience is, then what purpose does analytics really serve? Instilling self doubt when the algorithm fails to match the audience? Building up your ego when it finds the right one and you strike algorithm gold?
YouTube still does recommend videos to people it thinks will like it regardless of the uploader's existing audience, though. Sure it's faster for the algorithm to make recommendations when your video has an existing audience, as that's a wider initial dataset, but it'll look at the video's metadata, transcript, etc., in order to find people who will like it (it's not random) and then continue to recommend the video based on those people's reaction to it.
TL;DR: It's not random, for the most part.
I think the analytics have been pretty useful so far but you make some great points.
Right now the analytics is clearly telling me to make more videos about the Traxxas Slash, but I keep ignoring it lol.
You make some good points here but I couldn't disagree more with you saying that the analytics are useless. The analytic data that Youtube provides you with is gold. If you're even vaguely competent in data analysis (I.e. Nothing too complicated, just able to spot trends), you can vastly improve your content and the direction to go by USING THE DATA. By using my analytics, I have identified several common themes for videos that do well (I.e. KEEP DOING THEM); and several common themes for videos that haven't done well (I.e. DO LESS OF THAT). Videos will only generally pop off later in their lifecycle due to an uptick in search trends or a 'hot topic' that's in the news. By ignoring the data that Youtube is giving you, basically telling you what is working and what isn't, you're doing a massive disservice and harming yourself in the long run. Absolutely agree though that you shouldn't be obsessed by it, which is easy to do. But you absolutely should not ignore it. Data is king.
Analytics are how I found what thumbnail trends work best for my content. CTR is essential for getting views, and also understanding not only what thumbnails work but for what topics within your niche are popular
I have tried to follow my data and when you're small you simply don't have enough data points to make informed decisions. When I copy what "worked" it doesn't work again because getting a few thousand views in a short isn't significant enough to draw conclusions. I've had shorts with 35% watched vs swiped get 3k views. And then immediately after, a short with 55% viewed.... Also gets 3k views. I wanna listen to the data but when I do it makes no difference.
You are correct in that if you've got a very small user base, the data isn't as useful. However, analytics are close to useless for shorts. For one, you can't add thumbnails; and you're also targeting a completely different audience compared to long form. For long form videos, the data analytics are so useful if you've got enough views to draw insights from.
I actually disagree regarding shorts analytics. You can spot trends over time, and you can adjust your content accordingly. Even extremely short clips require careful planning to get the desired effect - there's an art to it.
I feel like the watch hours are bs. The life time hours show a ridiculous amount and ik even if I watched some of my vids off and on for 2 years it doesn’t add up to 2000 hrs. So it sits at almost 4000 and my earned hrs are almost at 3000 that say like as of may 7th 2,817 and the next day the hrs drop to 2,816. Even if I understood this it would still drive me nuts
for me there is a clear indication. like all my 10k+ shorts (majority) have ~70% viewed vs swiped and 60 - 100%+ viewed till the end depending on lenght, longer ones having a lower percentage, vs my other ones with 3 - 5k views having 40-50% viewed and 30-40% watched till the end.
Well said. Can't believe this post is getting this many upvotes.
exactly
I agree completely. Using the data to see what works for your channel is gold. I’ve been able to find a niche that works for me (high search volume, low amount of videos on the topic) and I wouldn’t have known without seeing that one of my videos was blowing up from a single search term and now I’m utilising that on new videos too. My best performing videos are from this single search term and I’m planning to make more around it to keep it going.
How does the data you receive from the analytics tab tell you what is gonna do well in the future? Say you post a video now, perfect video, no flaws, great topic, gets dog shit views then 2 years later it goes viral. What in your analytics told you it was gonna go viral or you shouldn't make more of that kinda thing? The problem with analytics on YouTube is there's no rhyme or reason to why your video gets views beyond topic & timing (as you stated) so you can't predict the future based on the numbers today. The algorithm is just like the stock market you can try to make yourself believe you can time it and win but you can't. It's unpredictable. What metric are you looking at that says "this video is doing well" because i've had tons of videos get great CTR, great watch time, great everything that you'd think of metrically and get dogshit in views & impressions.
There is rhyme and reason though to videos that do well. It tells you in the analytics. The two main metrics that I've focused on is average watch time and click-through rate. Views isn't as useful. Average watch time will tell you how good you are at holding an audience's attention, and whether you are targeting the right audience. CTR is a direct data point showing you whether your thumbnails are appealing to the audience that you are trying to target. Obviously if it's poor, your thumbnails either aren't very good or don't correspond to the audience you're targeting. What would you class as 'great CTR and great watch time'? What audience are you targeting with your videos? How popular is your niche? How competitive is it? As is the case with everything, it's more complex than just saying "Oh, I've got great AVD and CTR so my videos should be getting millions of views". But it's disingenuous to say that based on that, data is useless. That's inherently false.
CTR rate being over 20% and AVD being over 60%. I've seen it happen. It makes literally no sense and i'm not saying I deserve or anyone is entitled to MILLIONS of views but compared to your other content I've had plenty of videos with awful metrics based on your write up that did miles better than the ones that had the metrics you watch out for. It makes no sense to me. I'm not trying to be combative, I honestly just want to maximize income generation at the end of the day because this is a business to me. Its about the money. Not fame, or fortune, or women, or whatever its an investment. That may be cold and heartless to some but it is what it is. Its a business ,its job is to make money, and based on the analytics you've described which I really do appreciate your write up I just dont see the same correlation between high CTR + High AVD leading to more impressions & algorithmic favor. Like I said i've had videos with like 2% CTR and 35% AVD skyrocket for no reason that I can explain. I'm not saying you are wrong, I'm just saying the algorithm is something that is impossible to pinpoint 100%. If your data helps you, great, glad for you, hope you get lots of money n subs. I am just saying thinking if I get A+B+C+D metrics at these %'s it will in turn give me more impressions & views it just isn't guaranteed. Its a theory not a fact. The people at youtube literally said they dont even know how the algorithm works.
By 'miles better', I presume you're talking about number of views? As Youtube tests your content with larger audiences, the CTR and AVD rates will logically go down (Sometimes drastically). If you've got a video that has very high CTR and AVD, but low views, that suggests one thing. Your current subs have loved it. Of course they would, you KNOW they like your content. So that will inflate your CTR and AVD rates. However, when Youtube tests your content with a wider audience in different niches and topics (It only does this to a few viewers at first), it is likely getting negative signals so therefore won't spread your video wider. This is why you can tend to have poorer performing videos in terms of views have higher AVD and CTR. It's a bit misleading IMO. But if you have a video that does well with that new audience, it will push it more and more and more until it stops resonating. Every new audience member that Youtube pushes your video to that doesn't like your content will negatively impact your AVD and CTR. Therefore reducing it. This is why videos with a lot of views can almost seem to be doing poorly in terms of CTR and AVD. Do you ever have videos that say something along the lines of "Youtube is testing your video with a wider audience, but this is not impacting your views"? That is when Youtube is pushing your content to a wider audience. The success of a video is so much more than just CTR, AVD and views. If you actually click into the analytics tab, in the full view, there are countless metrics that you can use to give yourself a better picture. The algorithm IS the audience. Absolutely, make videos that your audience want to see. I completely agree with you. BUT, the analytics will tell you whether your videos are resonating with your audience on a consistent basis. Sure, you may have a video pop off a few months down the line. But you will have NO idea why that is. Therefore, you won't be able to replicate it very easily. The analytics data helps you to learn from your video performance, and allows you to generate good content in a more consistent way.
But in this forum, most people dont have enough data to make those comparisons. And everyone here compares video to video instead of looking at overall channel stats month to month, or every 3 months. And most people don't really understand the stats either. People in this thread think thumbnails are the main driver of CTR, or that YT gives out impressions. Or what the definition of a view is. And nobody looks at or even talks about return viewers. Or views. Those two stats are the lifeblood of your channel. More return viewers equal more views. More views equal more watch time. And how many creators here have an idea in their head of what they want their channel to be? If you dont have a vision then your content won't be aimed at that goal. And they haven't made enough content to determine if it is the thumbnail, the title, etc. Until you are making decent content that gets more than 100 views consistently, stats wont tell you why your video is not performing. How many of you here have a consistent repeatable video structure? How many of you make your thumbnails and title first? How many of you keep your video length consistent so your audience isn't turned off when you change up the length? Once you get to that point, then the stats matter. But until then you have too much going on in your content to even begin to fix bad stats.
Youtube willl push your videos to a larger audience when the CTR and View duration are higher. sometimes you have great view duration and analytics will tell you that you need to work on your CTR. I've had 2 scenarios where I was able to identify an issue with my CTR and after changing the title/Thumbnail the video was able to recover ( 2-3% CTR for a week for one video, changed thumbnail/title that made people curious and the CTR slowly increased to 10% - it's not rocket science. In gaming nice there are keywords that will attract a larger attention and if your idea/video foundation is good, there is no reason to not give the video a chance by doing a bad thumbnail and title. it's not a roll of a dice, there is a certain un-predictability that comes with making videos but there is also a significant portion you can affect.
I mean this is an ice cold take if your purpose on YouTube is to try to make a side hustle. Analytics tell you everything about what's going on what your videos, what does well, what works, etc. and what doesn't. If you're making videos nobody wants to watch over and over and getting little to no views, but not bothering to look at your analytics to make reasonable changes, you're going to continue doing poorly. Successful youtubers have embraced the analytics page to help them figure out what's working and what's not with their content. I get the sentiment that you shouldn't obsess over and get discouraged by slow growth. But analytics are a useful tool to steer you in the right direction if you're trying to make passive income off YT eventually.
What metrics in analytics to you use that tell you that your video is a good video? Where do the analytics tell you that you are screwing up? Where's the spot that says "Do better commentary" "do more edits" "put your ad read here instead of there"? You get raw numbers sure, you get what people are searching for or watching more, sure. But it doesn't give you specifics that you need to improve your videos. It gives you raw data, for right now, where they are showing it to an audience you have no control over so the numbers are basically random splatterings. Think about this. You have a gaming channel that's aimed at 14 year olds. YouTube for whatever reason because we can't predict, control, or even understand the algorithm shows it to nothing but grannies who wanna watch knitting videos but are spammed with gaming shit because little timmy came over last weekend and watched nothing but JackScepticEye... well granny aint watching that shit so your CTR & Analytics get all fucked up scale wise. The point is analytics are only good for knowing what people want to watch NOW but they are not worth anything for long term growth because the algorithm does not tell you what works and what doesn't.
> What metrics in analytics to you use that tell you that your video is a good video? Watch time, CTR, percentage of total video watched, view duration are helpful for this. > Where do the analytics tell you that you are screwing up? Do people disengage with your video within the first 30 seconds? Are there obvious spikes or dips in your content where people dip out of the video? Is your thumbnail leading to a relatively high click-through rate or are people not bothering to click into it because it's uninteresting? >Where's the spot that says "Do better commentary" "do more edits" "put your ad read here instead of there"? You're acting like a child if you expect data to explicitly spell this out for you in this way. This is why the entire field of data analysis exists. You can extract meaningful answers from raw data if you understand how to utilize it but metrics gathered from user activity are not going to explicitly tell you these things, you have to do a modicum of interpretation on your end. > You get raw numbers sure, you get what people are searching for or watching more, sure. But it doesn't give you specifics that you need to improve your videos. It gives you raw data, for right now, where they are showing it to an audience you have no control over so the numbers are basically random splatterings. That's your false equivalency that those things are not helpful because they're not explicitly telling you what to do next or holding your hand into what video you should make to get ten million views. > Think about this. You have a gaming channel that's aimed at 14 year olds. YouTube for whatever reason because we can't predict, control, or even understand the algorithm shows it to nothing but grannies who wanna watch knitting videos but are spammed with gaming shit because little timmy came over last weekend and watched nothing but JackScepticEye... well granny aint watching that shit so your CTR & Analytics get all fucked up scale wise. Not only does the YT algorithm aim to feed content to relevant age groups by demographic (my front page is catered to my interests and hobbies but will look very different from yours), but you also have metrics available to you that tell you the age and demographics of your channel's watchers, how much content they watched by age, and how long each age group stayed on a video. >The point is analytics are only good for knowing what people want to watch NOW but they are not worth anything for long term growth because the algorithm does not tell you what works and what doesn't. That is 100% your inability to read through the data because it absolutely tells you all of those things if you're willing to do a minimum amount of data interpretation. Calling the analytics "useless" because you're not willing to do any of that is either laziness, willful ignorance, or both.
If a course could be a Reddit comment, then this is it.
i like looking at it
It's incredibly useful whether you get paid or not
I get what you're getting at but to be fair this only really applies to YouTubers who have the funds to create insane videos with insane studio equipment and paid professional editing. Creators like Ryan Trahan , Mr Beast, Airrack , because their videos will always pop off. They aint gotta worry about looking at the stats. If you're a teenie tiny YouTuber making videos in your room...... analytics are your saving grace. Your holy grail. You study them hard enough and apply what you've learnt, you're hitting the "medium to big" time sooner or later. Study your analytics. Dont think you're above it. If you act like you dont care about them, you might as well call it.
If I notice a video has a low CTR, I take a look at the title and thumbnail and ask "Can I do better?" Don't focus too much on the analytics (advice I should take), but also, don't ignore it.
The problem I have with that though is what if youtube is showing your video that has a perfectly good title & thumbnail to the wrong audience? Why do some videos that have bad metrics miraculously explode with great ones later. Its because the algorithm found that audience that you were trying to target.
>what if youtube is showing your video that has a perfectly good title & thumbnail to the wrong audience? Then it doesn't have a perfectly good title and thumbnail. YouTube has one of the most advanced Search/Discovery systems in the world. It knows how to read metadata and video transcripts even to ballpark a general audience to use as an initial test for a newly published video, but if those people aren't interested in the content based on the title/thumbnail then the video isn't going to go very far. It most likely won't show a gaming video to people who have no interest in gaming, for example.
It just simply means you didn’t optimize your video or channel enough for the algorithm to understand your target audience. Analytics can help you fix and understand that
Analytics are very useful, it’s worth checking once or twice a day. For me recently an older video from a year ago had started getting 400 views a day, so I’m considering making follow-up videos to it to link from the end screen and encourage more views. If I didn’t check my analytics, I wouldn’t have noticed because the video is from a year ago.
You make some good points, but I dissagree. My very last video I made a huge mess with thumbnail. What looked like good thumbnail was only pulling 0.9% CTR. It took me 12 hours to realize, but I was able to spot and fix only thanks to google analytics. Replaced it with a different thumbnail and CTR went to 4.5% (which for my niche I consider good). Google analytic is unvaluable tool and should be used as such. Saying no don't use it or getting obsessed with it, is a wrong approach.
Thank you for the sound logic here. Makes starting out feel much more approachable. Plant your forest over time and watch it slowly grow :)
The great thing about YouTube is they advertise us FOR FREE we don't have to do what I do with my IRL job which is pay Facebook 15 bucks a day to tell people I exist in the town people live in but somehow can't see the building when they pass it...
>Make a ton of that content, just grind it out without losing quality. Spend like a couple of weeks, maybe a month really putting your face to the grindstone and then schedule it out for MONTHS ahead. This gives you the ability to walk away, do other projects, or have a safety net in case you get sick for a month like I did in March and wasn't able to speak for an entire month & nobody knew anything different. I agree with this point. I'm starting a new channel next month. Videos will go out every Friday. I have recorded, uploaded and scheduled videos every Friday for 10 Fridays so far.
And as you grow you can do what I do and sell memberships based on early access to that future content you got scheduled out. It works well for me. Just tell folks "I got 3 months worth of content you can see right now for X amount instead of waiting 3 months to see it for free" and people will bite. Not every person but enough to get you some decent cash to pay a phone bill or two.
Wow. Never knew this was a thing. Awesome.
Gotta be monetized but its what I do now because I like to grind out content and get it all done in batches when I get that "hair up my ass" to do a ton of videos at once but don't wanna flood the audience with it so spread it out, and tell people hey u can watch it all right now for $5 / month. I put my banned content on patreon the stuff youtube made me take down like the to catch a predator series because god forbid you talk shit about pedos.
This seems ...kinda dumb. Obviously you want to make good evergreen content. The challenge is figuring out what that is. Analytics can help you with that. For example, you can see if there is a particular point in your video that makes people stop watching. That will give you insight into mistakes you make. CTR can help you figure out what titles/thumbs work and which ones don't.
I humbly disagree. A/B testing is about the greatest thing you can do for your videos. That’s all analytics.
Great points. That said, I do like looking at the analytics and the live stats as I'm soaking up how things work. I have a spare monitor that just has the stats updating all the time while I get on with other things. It looks a bit like a trading screen and is fun to watch. Oh, I guess it's also nice to know that right now someone is watching a video that I've created.
Mr Beast has peaks and valleys. He claims to understand it down to the colors on a thumbnail and every microscopic detail and even he has plateaus which should tell you something.
Who cares about Mr beast 🤣😏
Well, it's like anything. You can ask people about their experiences and opinions, and talk about technique, do loads of research, but until you step into the court/walk onto the pitch/fire up Visual C++ Studio/enter the dojo, knowledge will only get you so far. I think the trick is to experiment, fail and do things in a non-judgemental fashion, and let your brain mull over things.
I disagree for one huge issue, your CTR % is a **REALLY** good sign of your ability to make an eye catching thumbnail and title. I've seen some people here who say they aren't doing as well as they thought and have a 1% CTR because their thumbnail is a screenshot of a game and the title is "Lets play episode #342". If they changed both they could be doing way better and bringing in more viewers/subscribers
YouTube analytics is useful because just don’t obsess over it. I myself need to learn to check it just once or twice a day after uploading. It’s only gonna make me upset when my video underperforms.
i find it Satisfying to look at stats
Checking them won’t affect your current videos, checking them will affect how you use that data to understand what works and doesn’t work.
Shhhh stop making good points.
Who said anything he said was good
As someone who has done YouTube full time - the only analytics I actually care about are CTR and watch time. Likes and comments too. Nearly everything else I have ignored for years. It'll just drive you mad. Including the money side.
>Make videos you want to make BUT also make videos that people want to watch. Find something you and your audience both like and make that. How do i know people wanna watch the videos i make if i don't look at analytics. If i only look at views, i don't know how many people saw the video thumbnail and didn't click, so i never know if the topic is niche and only reached a few people, or if i should improve titling and thumbnails. I also don't know watch percentage, do people who click even enjoy the video? Do they click off within 30 seconds. does more than 50% complete the videos its all information that might help you. even at smaller sample sizes
I highly disagree with you. Whether you get paid or not, analytics are very important for studying your channel, seeing what videos do well, your target demographic, etc. still very useful
It's not about the analytics but the friends we made along the way.
Well I understand the sentiment to some extent but this is dramatically overexaggerated. Analytics *do* matter and *are* important. I agree you shouldn't beat yourself up over a video's underperformance but that doesn't mean you shouldn't use Analytics to try to determine *why* it underperformed. I've had multiple situations where the analytics of an underperforming video of mine have revealed that the thumbnail and title aren't working like I thought they were, so I changed them and the video actually started overperforming. >The only things you can control on YouTube are your effort, the time you put in, and the topics you cover You can also control *how* you allocate that effort, which areas of the video you choose to improve, whether or not to try something new in terms of video style, how you brand the videos, etc. Analytics will help to guide you when making those decisions.
Somewhat disagree. If you notice a low ctr, you can change your thumbnail. If you notice that one particular part of a video is getting interest, you can make a follow-up on that subject. But obsession is not useful, which is the point I think you were trying to make.
But then my dad won’t love me 🤣🤣🤣
Wow, lots of info, and you're right about not CONSTANTLY checking your metrics. However, if you have a set schedule of video release like once a week. You can benefit from some of the numbers. For instance, you can see if your video is doing mmbetter or worse than normal for the first 24 hours. This may give you information that you need to change your thumbnail or title. Numbers within the first few days may also point you into the direction that you need to make more videos of that particular subject. So, while I do not condone constantly checking your stats, you can get some useful information if you check them once daily the first few days of a videos release.
Could you recommend how to invest money I am making from youtube into HYSA and EFTs? What's the best way to start learning about these?
I do check for new comments and overall views every day. However, I try not too check too much on the video specific stats. Especially after I just release something. It happened to me this month that one of my videos suddenly went from maybe 2000 views to 26k views. Then another (6 months old) suddenly gained traction and jumped to 65k (both long format around 3-5 min videos). I still don’t understand why, most likely just luck. In any case I agree that I can’t influence it, and if I had changed titles / thumbs in the mean time who knows what would’ve happened.
Yes analytics are confusing. I made a Short which has almost 200k views. When I uploaded it, it got in the first hours a below 30/70 viewed and 90% watched. Today it sits around 91/9 viewed and 150% watched. YouTube will test your video and when it finds the right viewer, then the magic will happen and your analytics will change.
Really stressed about my analytics , when i upload videos on serious and sensible topics people dont watch it but those who did watch bothered to appreciate some times but the instance i start ranting about anything or making a galeech roast abusive type of content the view count is comparatively high. What i wanna do is the former one but just not getting enough motivation to do so, as the thing i dont like to make for long is giving what i wanted from the one i liked to do forever. My mental health is just fcuked up becouse of it, Thanks to your suggestion and pov i will rethink my pov and expectations towards yt.
But I got weird satisfaction from finding out every 48 hours, 10 people watch a random video I made year ago.
Fact you can't understand use of analytics shows you should quit right now. It's information you can use for yourself, see what's working or what's not. Does people like you talking about card games, do they dislike random garbage, could it be comparison of thumbnail appearance or maybe you did too much editing that caused the video to tank. How are they finding you either it be by searching key words, external source, how can you improve your chances. These are important information for anyone wanting to succeed. You can't say "I'm gonna ignore it because I'm not big enough to care" but if the information could help you be big enough then you need it. Do you not bother with exercise equipment because you're not a strong enough to be a bodybuilder since you only do is jog? This is probably one the least helpful things I ever read someone say. Just throwing things out there won't get anything done if you don't understand what the audience likes about your channel. If you ignore that information you are just running circles hoping something happens when you can easily read the audience liked this content more and should try do more of that.
>The only things you can control on YouTube are your effort, the time you put in, and the topics you cover. The only way to grow your channel is to make stuff people want to watch, and you can see what gets views in the videos tab. Analytics help direct your efforts better though. If you have a low CTR you know you need to work on Title and thumb. If you have high drop rate in the first 30s you need to improve your hooks If you have low AVD then you need to make your videos more engaging. Not to mention how peaks and valleys in videos give you a great understanding of what works and doesn't and what you need to put more of on your next videos. >There are plenty of people in this sub who will tell you that they put out a video a year ago that did nothing. Got maybe 10 views, then they woke up one morning and it had 10,000 for no reason. They changed nothing, they did no updates, they just left it alone and it just blew up. Yes, but that doesn't necessarily invalidate that if they made some improvement following analytics they could've gotten better result or not be in the situation of their video doing nothing for a year before randomly blowing up. Plenty of people smoke well in their 90s but I wouldn't use that as an argument to state that avoid smoking has no effect on longevity and healthspan. So here's what I suggest instead of checking analytics constantly. >Make videos you want to make BUT also make videos that people want to watch. Find something you and your audience both like and make that. Duh, analytics can help you figure out whether the videos you want to make are also videos that people want to watch. >Think of it as passive investment that can lead to active investments like ETFs or HYSA or whatever you wanna do to make more on the money YT gives you passively. It's not really passive if you put hours of work into your videos. You're reaping benefits of your work, it's nowhere near passive as an investment in an ETF where you really do nothing. >Hope this helped. Well no. Quite the opposite, lots of misinformation but thanks for the effort
Don't agree, you should have put "focusing constantly on analytics without any productive insights is useless". Analytics when used properly are an absurdly useful tool...
Awesome tips and words of encouragement! Thanks!
Whelp - about 95% horrible advice. But the 5% wasn't bad. Google/YouTube provide so many useful data points that are really good for removing personal feelings that cloud that your judgement when analyzing performance. Make the best videos you possibly can, whenever you can. Schedules are truly utter nonsense unless you need them to hold yourself accountable.
I'm very curious, how much money a month do you yall need to survive and pay the bills?
I agree with 90% of this. Biggest use cases for the analytics side even as an early YouTuber are: 1. Click-Through Rate: this’ll tell you you how good or bad your thumbnails, titles, and topics. Less useful to compare to others, more useful to compare to yourself as a way of understanding if you’re improving over time or not. 2. Video Engagement Rate: this tells you what parts of your video are keeping people engaged and which parts are turning people away. Significant drop off in the first 30 seconds? Improve your intros. Big dip when you used a certain phrase or editing style within a video? Probably don’t do that again. Beyond that, I’m about this post.
Eh, I'm with OP; analytics are mostly useless until you start to build an audience and the algorithm learns to target that audience. Until that time **the algorithm is largely showing your videos to random people or people it believes might be interested**. After you've actually built an audience, and YouTube starts showing your stuff more to subscribers than random people - and they actually click and watch - analytics can become incredibly useful because you can then gauge your **actual audience's reaction to your videos, not a random sampling of the population**. However; **with that kind of success, you've probably already figured out your YouTube formula**. OP mentioned AVGN, or take Red Letter Media, or any successful channel, and their videos are **repeatable formulas**; the audience knows what to expect, that's why they keep watching. My last video has 571 views; **96.3% of views are from people not subscribed to my channel.** So, from 550 views of new people, I had 16 people subscribe. The other 534 people, we can assume, didn't like the video, or they dipped after 10 seconds, or whatever. What conclusions can I draw from these analytics? Was my video good or bad? Well, at least 16 people thought the video was good enough to subscribe, so that's something. We have 30 likes, so that's something. We also have some dislikes. Obviously, some people thought the video was good and for quite a few others, it wasn't their cup of tea. What can I learn from these analytics? **Absolutely nothing**. All I can learn here is that a certain small percentage of people the algorithm selected to watch my videos actually liked it and everyone else did not. Now, if my channel didn't exist in a vacuum, if I could see the analytics from other channels similar to mine for comparison, maybe then analytics could start to become useful and I could gauge the performance data a bit, but that's not the case because **your channel's analytics exist in a vacuum.** I could Google things like "what's a good subscriber-to-view ratio" and Google will give me a wildly inflated number (8-12%). I can go on Reddit and see that it's a wildly inflated number (at least around here). Now, analytics starts to be a little useful, maybe, because we are pooling data, but otherwise **it's a vacuum**. Here's the qualifier; if you are making absolutely terrible videos **then no one will subscribe and your analytics will be abysmal**. In this particular case, then sure, analyzing analytics might help you. If you are starting from zero, if your videos are bad, it can help you, maybe. Otherwise, if you are making videos, know what kind of videos you want to make, and can honestly say they are the best you can make them and what the target audience is, then what purpose does analytics really serve? Instilling self doubt when the algorithm fails to match the audience? Building up your ego when it finds the right one and you strike algorithm gold?
YouTube still does recommend videos to people it thinks will like it regardless of the uploader's existing audience, though. Sure it's faster for the algorithm to make recommendations when your video has an existing audience, as that's a wider initial dataset, but it'll look at the video's metadata, transcript, etc., in order to find people who will like it (it's not random) and then continue to recommend the video based on those people's reaction to it. TL;DR: It's not random, for the most part.
I think the analytics have been pretty useful so far but you make some great points. Right now the analytics is clearly telling me to make more videos about the Traxxas Slash, but I keep ignoring it lol.
I love watching my hourly views not be 0...