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Kiera Abbamonte on June 19, 2019 (last modified on January 23, 2023) • 17 minute read
While we all know the power of video by now, that doesnât mean we know how to track it.
YouTube has its own set of analytics and KPIs that differ from other digital marketing channels. That can make it harder to get started with (and continuously improve) a solid video marketing strategy.
To help remedy that, we talked to 42 marketers about the YouTube KPIs they consider must-track metrics.
When we asked them to rank YouTube KPIs from most to least important, the responses skewed definitively toward engagement-type metrics like watch time and average percentage viewed.
But those arenât the only metrics we heard aboutâmarketers also highlighted several other lesser-known KPIs they use to measure YouTube performance. Without further ado, here are the 17 YouTube analytics our respondents say you should be tracking, too.
There was a definite consensus among the marketers we spoke to that Watch Time is a must-track KPI on YouTubeâfor a myriad of reasons.
Venkatesh C.R. of Dot Com Infoway explained one of those reasons: âThereâs no denying that Views are an important metric but Views alone wonât give you enough information to make significant improvements to your YouTube videos.â
âYou can have millions of views,â added Digital Brewâs Michael Cardwell, âbut if your watch time doesnât reflect the length of the video, you know that people arenât engaging the way they should be.â
When it comes to gauging success, Alex Cascio of Vibrant Media Productions gave it to us straight, noting, âIf youâre consistently putting out videos that have very low watch times, you need to do something different.â To combat low watch times, Rio Rocket of Rio Rocket SEO Services recommends taking a more story-based approach to your videos, explaining, âStorytelling and episodic structure is extremely important because it leads the viewer to the next video and encourages them to watch your videos in their entirety.â
The other key reason to monitor watch time had to do with YouTubeâs algorithm. âIf you have a higher watch time,â Mallory Bar of SyncShow concluded, âYouTube will elevate your video in the search results and recommendations section.â
âIt’s one of the major ranking factors for Youtube SEO,â said Oz Chowdhury of Powerphrase. âIt’s similar to Google’s SEO, where bounce rate and dwell time are determining factors for your organic rankings.â
Gabriel Marguglio of Nextiny Marketing added how important watch time is for businesses, âWatch time translates better as an engagement metric than view counts. If the majority of people are watching the majority of your videos, that means they are going to remember your brand fondly. â
Want an expert to audit your Youtube (or Wistia) metrics and give you advice on how to improve your performance? Request a free video audit from Databox Premier Partner, Nextiny Marketing.
Morgan Bachemin of Online Optimism shared this tip to close out our discussion of watch time: âSince your watch time report provides the cumulative watch time of your videos, you can make that data work for you by grouping videos by their themes, lengths, and styles to see how this relates to their watch times.â
According to Databoxâs own Benchmark data, the median value of watch time is 1d 5h 51m (monthly).
This benchmark was calculated from anonymized data from close to 250 companies. Do you want to benchmark your video marketing performance, including Views, watch time, average view duration, subscribers gained, and more against other companies like yours? Join the Benchmark Group for free.
Viewing benchmark data can be enlightening, but seeing where your companyâs efforts rank against those benchmarks can be game-changing.
Browse Databoxâs open Benchmark Groups and join ones relevant to your business to get free and instant performance benchmarks.
Seth Kravitz of PHLEARN commands a YouTube channel with 1.7 million subscribers, so we were anxious to hear Kravitzâs take on the most important KPI on the channel.
âJust looking at overall subscriber gains and losses, isn’t useful. That ends up being a vanity metric with little helpful data in it,â Kravitz told us. âYou need to know what videos are bringing new subscribers in and then try to break down the reasons why that video worked.â
Marguglio adds, “We think about subscribers as unspoken customer reviews. It becomes part of your eventual growth and is part of an overall Youtube optimization plan. A channel that has 100k subscribers is more likely going to influence more people into subscribers vs the impact of a channel with only 10. In other words, subscriptions create subscribers.â
Editorâs note: Want to get notified when important KPIs trend up or down? Get Databox alerts for your KPIs now.
Similar to search engines and keywords, YouTubeâs algorithm ranks videos based on tags, and as Kristeen Romero of Oxygen puts it, âCountless brand videos suffer from bad tagging, and they canât take advantage of lucrative long-tail queries on YouTube as a result.â
As for how to track your video rankings, Romero recommends using a handful of tools in conjunction: âTracking your rankings via TubeBuddy or VidIQ, pairing that with their keyword research tools, and using YouTubeâs own Creator Studio will give you a better picture of how things work.â
To find out what types of video content perform best with your audience, you may track video engagement metrics such as watch time, number of views, likes and dislikes of each video individually using a variety of tools, including YouTube itself.
Now you can quickly monitor your video content performance in a single dashboard that monitors fundamental metrics, such as:
Now you can benefit from the experience of our video marketing experts, who have put together a plug-and-play Databox template showing the most important metrics for measuring your YouTube channel performance. Itâs simple to implement and start using as a standalone dashboard or in marketing reports, and best of all, itâs free!
You can easily set it up in just a few clicks – no coding required.
To set up the dashboard, follow these 3 simple steps:
Step 1: Get the template
Step 2: Connect your YouTube account with Databox.
Step 3: Watch your dashboard populate in seconds.
âIf users bail out of a video mid-play,â said Shawn DeWolfe of Shawn DeWolfe Consulting, âit speaks to the value of the video being so-so.â Thatâs information marketers definitely want access to.
âTracking this metric,â explained McCall Robison of Best Company, âallows you to see if your videos are holding your audience’s attention and, if not, where they’re dropping off and losing interest. That can help you improve your videos and identify the problem areas.â
Gray Gannaway of Quarterlab noted, âWe all know the importance of watch time, but audience retention is how you get there. If you can keep viewers locked in for the majority of your video, you’re better positioned to extend their overall watch time and viewing session duration.â
Growth Hackersâ Jonathan Aufray told us that average percentage viewed is a more illuminating metric to gauge individual video quality than overall views. âIt can be interesting to track the number of views your videos get, but that shows you the quality of the marketing behind your videoânot the quality of your videos.â Average percentage viewed, on the other hand, enables you to judge whether âyour targeting is right and if your audience is engaged and interested by the videos you post.â
âTraffic source is a goldmine of data,â said Zoogly Mediaâs Andrew Holland. âAnd you can use that data to increase other metrics like views and subscribers.â
âBy simply adding the right tags and having keyword variations in your description you stand a far better chance of increasing your views,â Holland explained. And the way to make sure youâre using the right tags and keywords is to identify those youâre already ranking for in the traffic source report.
âThat allows you to make some changes to add those keywords into your description and add tags for those search termsâwhich helps your video to rank higher and have a greater chance of being a ‘suggested video’ for those search terms.â
Editor’s note: Have all YouTube performance metrics on a joint dashboard along with traffic source data by using marketing reporting software like Databox to further analyze and adapt your strategy for the most common traffic sources.
Both Matt Erickson of National Positions and Andrew Ruditser of Maxburst said the most important YouTube KPI has to do with what happens (or doesnât) after the video is finished.
âThe actions the viewer takes after viewing your video, like tapping the link in your end card or clicking your CTA button, will show you the true impact your videos are having,â Erickson said.
Ruditser talked about the lack of depth offered by more commonly tracked metrics like views, lamenting the vital engagement and buying intent data that falls through the cracks. âOne way to keep track of this is to provide a call to action at the end of your video,â Ruditser said. âIf users arenât interacting with this call to action, then you know.â
Max Brudvig of Chicago Film Scene took a straight-forward approach to our central question about which metrics are really the most important, choosing average view duration âbecause it’s the most important metric when it comes to YouTube’s algorithm. YouTube wants people on their website longer,â Brudvig explained, âso everything else should grow once your viewers are sticking around.â
âThis metric alone can give you invaluable feedback on how your videos are performing,â said Pest Rankâs Dan Christensen. âIf you see that a certain part of the video causes a major drop-off, you need to include a cutaway, visual aid, or rearrange the order of the info youâre sharing.â
âYou could have all the views in the world,â Lauren Irwin of Abstrakt added, âbut a viewer might only be engaging with the video for the first 3 seconds.â
Lizzie Dunn of Fundera shared that conclusion, noting that average view duration, on the other hand, âmeasures how effective your content is at engaging viewers, offering insights about the quality of your content and helping you identify videos that arenât serving viewers.â
If your video can’t engage the people watching,â Dunn explained, âtheyâll bounce quickly from your video.â
According to Databoxâs own Benchmark data, the average view duration on YouTube videos is 1m 30s.
David Larivière of Willow & Hive shared one YouTube KPI that we didnât hear a lot aboutâbut itâs definitely an important one: audience retention. After all, most brands are creating videos and cultivating an audience on YouTube in order to build up a community of engaged fans.
As Larivière put it, âAudience retention offers a deeper understanding of the health of the channel over time. That understanding tells marketers when to invest more and when to surf the wave and prepare for the next big move.â
Jed Skrzypczyk of BluBluStudios.com noted, âWhatâs even more crucial than views, likes, or shares is the knowledge of the userâs engagement. With audience retention data, you can see how viewers behave, when they skip some parts, when they rewatch other fragments, and more. That makes it easy to know what works in the video and what doesn’t.â
âWe want everyone to watch every second of our video work,â said David Wells of Tank Design. âBut that doesnât always happen.â
âKnowing when, and importantly, where in our stories viewers drop off can offer tons of insightsâincluding helpful hints about what type of content to produce next, based on where people are most engaged.â
âYouTube elevates videos with higher retention in their search rankings,â Signature Video Groupâs Chris Stasiuk explained, âbecause higher retention tells the algorithm that this video is valuable to the audience.â
âNew business equals a new audience,â said Jessie Suriano of Muddy Trails Film Co. âSo YouTube marketers should be focusing their efforts on reaching a new demographic.â
Suriano also noted that focusing on subscriber growth can yield better results nearly across the board of video performance. âSubscriber growth can increase all forms of interaction for marketersâmore views, user engagement, and watch time.â
Views-to-engagement ratio is, in a nutshell, how YouTube determines the relevance and quality of every video. That makes it one of the most important metrics to track according to Eric Tyler of Innovate House Buyers.
Tyler explained, âYouTubeâs algorithm ranks videos higher when a user watches a video and then Likes or comments. Comments hold more weight than likes and the combination of both provides a video with maximum power.â Thatâs why, in addition to how many comments and likes a video has, itâs vital to understand that engagement as a function of the total number of views, too.
Need tips on how to improve your engagement ratio? Marguglio adds, “The more consistent you are with your publishing cadence, promotion, and message, the higher your engagement will be since your regular viewers will be the ones who interact with your videos.â
Editorâs note: Looking for a better way to figure out which videos are driving results? Download this free YouTube Top Videos dashboard to get a deeper look at successful videosâso you can create more just like them.
Graeme McLaughlin of Explainify agrees with many of the other marketers we heard from that watch time is an important KPI to monitor. But, as McLaughlin pointed out, âbefore you can get them to watch it all, they need to be inspired to click play.â
âYouTube is a highly competitive space, so brands need to stand out from the get-go,â said Alex Dunn of Big Sea.
âImpression Click-Through Rate stands as a strong indicator of how well you connect with new audiencesâmore so than views or engagement alone. When paired with Average Percentage Viewed,â Dunn added, âuploaders should have a clear picture of what’s resonating well with audiences and what kind of content is keeping them involved.â
From new subscribers to likes, comments, shares, and more, several marketers we spoke with told us engagement metrics are what itâs all about on YouTube.
âEngagement is a prime directive of YouTubeâs algorithm, as this indicates if people find your content interesting and worth interacting with,â explained Alex Schult of Designrr. âWe found that our views skyrocketed after we optimized our existing content for engagement.â
Eric Melillo said COFORGE used to focus their YouTube KPIs on watch time, but lately, theyâve migrated toward engagement metrics. âI consider engagement a more qualitative metric. It helps me gauge the videos’ emotional impact based on how users are interacting through commenting, sharing, liking, and even disliking. It also helps fuel future content ideas.â
Mediaguruâs Christina O’Connor said they focus on engagement metrics by way of click-throughs, as OâConnor put it, âBecause without understanding your CTA’s success rates you can’t do more of what works.â
âOne statistic to watch is impressions,â said John Locke of Lockedown Design & SEO. âAnd specifically, the percentage of impressions youâre getting from YouTube recommending your content.â
âIf your impression percentage from the YouTube algorithm recommending your content is flat, you may need to make adjustments to the routine and structure of your videos,â Locke explained. âIf the impression percentage is going up, that means your videosâand audience engagement with themâhas led YouTube to recommend them to an increasingly larger audience.â
For the subset of brands that aim to use YouTube for more direct sales and marketing, tracking leads generated is a no-brainer. âVideo is no longer just about branding,â said Heather Baker of TopLine Film. âIt’s an active lead gen tool, and your videos should be designed for that.â
In addition to tracking lead generation across the board, itâs also beneficial to drill down and gain a better understanding of things like:
âClick-through rate helps marketers better understand customer behavior,â said Hima Pujara of Your Team in India. âHigher CTR means your audience is more engaged, while a lower CTR can offer ideas for how to improve your CTAs and cards.â
âWhen users are on YouTube,â explained DIY Digital Strategyâs Ben Lund, âtheyâre unlikely to disrupt their video and click off to another site. They don’t want to be interruptedâand thatâs a key difference between Google searches (where users are looking to click somewhere else to uncover information) and video.â
âIf you’re able to get clicks out of the program,â Lund added, âthat shows that your video really resonates with your audience.â
âTracking the popularity of your video is great,â Lance Kopp of WebTek said. âTracking the effectiveness of the video is even better.â For many marketers, thatâs a vital and nuanced distinction.
Kopp advises YouTube marketers to âtarget the viewer, not the view.â In other words, how does the video encourage your audience to take action? How does your YouTube content move viewers through the funnel toward a purchase?
âFind out how many viewers your video converts into potential customers or fans by tracking the âclicks per end screen element,ââ Kopp suggests. âThis shows you whether the viewer clicked to subscribe, to watch another video you suggested, or to your external link.â
Simply put, âIf you want your videos to appear on the front page of Youtube and possibly go viral, an important metric is View Velocity,â said Pulkit Gera of IMobsession. View velocity is a measurement of the relationship between time and the number of views a video receives, spread over the videoâs entire lifetime.
âFor established publishers with a strong following, this number is usually greatest in the beginning, when the video goes public,â Gera explained. :For less established publishers, the view velocity of their videos will increase as people start discovering their content and begin browsing the channelâs videos for more related content.â
Gera told us that channels that achieve consistently high view velocity have a better chance of getting new video featured on YouTubeâs homepage.
Marketing on YouTube comes with its own set of unique terms and analytics. But at the end of the day, success on YouTube comes down to the same elements as success on any other digital marketing platform:
Tracking the 17 YouTube KPIs our friends highlighted empowers your team with the data you need to make those two things happenâand drive business success with video.
Need a quick performance update on your most important Youtube KPIs? Set Databox Scorecards and receive updates on your KPIs through email, mobile push notification, and/or Slack.
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