It’s well known that YouTube is the second largest search engine on the internet, eclipsed only by its parent company, Google. YouTube processes over 3 billion searches per month and it has over one billion unique visitors during that same time frame. With those kinds of numbers, you can see that your video has an amazing potential to be seen by a wide audience.
Even more exciting is that YouTube provides creators with key insights on videos that have been uploaded to the platform, with recently-developed tools adding to the capabilities.
The YouTube Studio dashboard has been available to creators since last June. Ever since, video creators have been using this beta dashboard and providing YouTube with feedback to improve the user experience. Soon, the software will move from the beta stage and become the default version replacing the YouTube Studio Classic version.
As part of the new studio, you’ll find new metrics contained in YouTube Analytics. These new metrics include impressions, the impression click-thru rate, and unique views. Here are some quick details about each category:
- Impressions – An impression is counted when the viewer can see one of your video thumbnails, as each instance represents the opportunity for the creator to earn a view
- Impression Click-through Rate – The rate shows the number of impressions that have been converted to views by a user actively clicking the link to see a video
- Unique Viewers – This is the estimated number of people who have watched the video over a set period of time
How It Helps
The new metrics provide key information to a video’s creator that can help the creator to begin targeting a specific audience. Knowing the impact your videos are having and how many views they are receiving can go a long way in helping you to determine future content strategies.
By using the impression click-thru rate, the creator gets a measure on the appeal and the effectiveness of the title, the description, and the thumbnail image for the video. Upon checking your metrics, you may find yourself asking:
- Did the initial image or the title of the video encourage the viewer to commit and watch the message?
- Should I modify the title or alter the initial image to something more eye-catching?
- Is there a reason video A is doing better than video B?
The creator can change the title, the description, or the preview image to optimize the video, giving them real control over their results.
And with the unique viewer measure, the creator knows how many “unique” people viewed the video. This is different from purely measuring the number of views since one person could watch a clip multiple times. The unique viewer metric allows for a better measure of the reach of your video.
With the use of video becoming a larger, more important element in effective communication on the internet, YouTube has provided creators with better tools to use in assessing the reach of their video. Amazing and powerful!
