YouTube is a common social media platform for content distribution. Creating top-notch video content for your YouTube account will drive brand growth.

YouTube has become a search engine. It’s not like Google, but it’s still significant.

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After using engaging videos to showcase your products and services, you should use YouTube analytics to check YouTube metrics.

But what YouTube metrics should you look at? Why do you need to check your performance on YouTube?

What are YouTube metrics?

YouTube metrics are the information you get about the performance of your content through the native analytics tool or a third-party analytics tool.

This set of metrics offers valuable information on how to adjust your YouTube content strategy to achieve your marketing goals.

YouTube metrics are different from YouTube KPIs. YouTube metrics focus on views, watch time, and subscribers.

YouTube KPIs represent measurements that are strongly related to business objectives.

On the other hand, YouTube metrics provide the data needed for KPIs but are not directly related to the growth trajectory.

Why is it essential to check YouTube metrics?

If you’re wondering why checking YouTube metrics is essential, consider your goals.

With your YouTube analytics and metrics knowledge, you’ll better understand what type of video content works for you and what doesn’t.

Looking at the numbers will benefit your next marketing campaign, as you will be able to learn more about the performance of your channel.

How to view YouTube analytics in the native app

Here’s how you can get all the numbers you need:

Step 1: Sign in to your YouTube account.

Step 2: Click on your profile icon in the upper right corner.

Step 3: Select YouTube Studio.

Step 4: Select Analytics from the left menu.

Depending on the information you’re looking for, you can now choose between overview, reach, engagement, audience, and revenue (if applicable).

This is the data you can obtain using the native YouTube analytics app:

Best and Worst Performing Video: Discover your best and worst-performing videos regarding viewership.

Subscriber Views: The YouTube Subscriber Report shows you the videos with the highest subscriber views.

What platforms are your videos being viewed on? This metric helps you understand which platforms your YouTube videos are being viewed on.

Number of subscribers gained and lost: The YouTube subscribers report lets you know when you gained and lost subscribers. How many comments, shares, likes and dislikes have you received for your videos?

YouTube metrics you should be tracking

You can go right if you regularly look at the data, stay up to date with all the updates, check YouTube analytics, and track the most critical YouTube metrics.

Below, we look at the YouTube metrics that keep the engine of your online business turning.

Commitment: Engagement is the fundamental YouTube metric to constantly pay attention to when interested in your brand’s progress. Engagement shows the number of likes, dislikes, shares, and comments. You can refer to this crucial data to learn more about your audience’s likes and opinions about your videos. By responding to their comments and interacting with them, positive or negative, you can still win over your users as they will see how professional you are.
Traffic sources: This YouTube metric considers all other sources that feature your YouTube videos. Your YouTube video content can appear on users’ homepages, in the recommended section, in social media posts, and on web pages that embed your videos. These are all sources of traffic that help you grow your community, brand awareness, and online engagement. A specialized traffic sources report will show you where your viewers are coming from so you know where you can spread more videos. You can get more views by promoting your YouTube videos on other platforms.
Display time: Watch time is a helpful YouTube metric that gives insight into how much time users have spent watching your video content. If the view rate of your videos is high, YouTube will rank that video higher since it managed to attract so many users. This way, channels with higher watch time rates will suggest you to more people in the recommendations section and search results. You can also use this YouTube metric to sort your videos by topic, length, and style.
Click rate: Click-through rates show the percentage of impressions turned into views. You will see how many users who see your thumbnail click on it. An impression occurs when one of your video thumbnails appears on a user’s screen. By seeing which video has the highest number of impressions, you can determine which videos were most distributed by YouTube.
Unique viewers: This YouTube metric shows the estimated number of users watching your videos during a selected period. This way, you’ll know who your audience is and what they appreciate about your video content. If you notice that the number of unique viewers is less than the number of subscribers, your community watches fewer videos than you think. Ask them to set up notifications for your content to convince them to watch more videos. This way, they will be more interested whenever you post a new video.
Likes, Dislikes and Comments: Likes, dislikes, and comments are part of the engagement metric but can also be overlooked as independent YouTube metrics. These metrics will make the algorithm perceive your content as valuable. This way, your organic evolution will prosper as YouTube will more likely show your videos in the recommended area and search results. YouTube metrics such as comments, likes, and dislikes will demonstrate the efficiency of your content strategy.
The average percentage of views: This is another crucial YouTube video metric that allows you to see how much video the average viewer watches. Nowadays, it is more difficult to hold someone’s attention for too long as the attention span of users has been reduced over time. Everyone wants to watch short videos with the right amount of information. If your video is too long, YouTube users may only watch it at the end. The purpose is to make users more curious about your brand, keeping their eyes fixed for hours with videos that suit your needs.
Average length of views: Average view duration is another YouTube metric. This YouTube information refers to the total watch time of your video divided by the total number of views of the video (also including replays). Primarily, this critical metric shows you how engaging your videos are with YouTube users. When developing new videos for your audience, the main goal is to make them more creative, informative, and short enough to keep them interested until the end. Keep this in mind to increase the values of your video metrics.
Repeat Plays: Users tend to rewatch your YouTube video content when they receive crucial information and may need more time to process it. Before continuing, they rewatch certain parts of a video or even the entire video to take notes or pay more attention to the recipe you are explaining. Replays are a good indicator that users are interested in the content you publish.
Participation in the playlist: You can categorize your videos according to topics and subjects to make your content more enjoyable or easier to access. This way, your viewers will know exactly where to find the content that interests them. Playlists will be helpful not only for your channel users but also for you. To ensure playlists are an option for your YouTube videos, you can check playlist engagement and view your audience behavior. It will be helpful for your content strategy to consider two important metrics regarding playlist engagement: average time spent on a playlist and views per playlist. Generally, users tend to move to the next video in the playlist, knowing that the content is related to what they previously viewed. And this is precisely what you are looking for.
Subscriber growth: SubscribersThey are your most prominent followers. Some know your journey from the beginning, while others are new to your YouTube channel and must be motivated to remain loyal subscribers. You must ensure your audience gets what they’re looking for to meet everyone’s needs. They are committed to watching your video content when the “Subscribe” button is clicked; the greater the number of subscribers, the higher the notifications your YouTube channel sends. You’ll get a subscribers report using YouTube’s analytics tool that includes the topics your subscribers are interested in. You can use this information in your video to increase views and engagement.
Audience retention: This YouTube metric indicates the percentage of viewers who watch and leave your video at each moment in the video. YouTube then continues to show those videos with high audience retention in search suggestions and rankings. Based on your audience retention, you can plan your future video strategy and improve your CTAs, the content you offer, and the dynamism of your video. This YouTube metric will also show you which parts of your video were the most exciting and boring.

Demography: Your audience rules when you promote your brand on social media platforms. On YouTube, you want to know what users like and dislike and what trends they’re following. First of all, you need to find out what is the average age you are targeting. If you know more about age groups and genres, you’ll know how to tailor your YouTube videos to their needs. The YouTube analytics tool will also help you gain insight into your subscribers’ locations so you know exactly when they will most likely watch your videos.