Understand your YouTube content performance

The Content tab in YouTube Analytics gives you an overview of how your audience finds your content, what your audience is watching, and how they interact with your content. The Content tab is only available at the channel level. Learn more about how engagement metrics are counted.

Check out the following video from the YouTube Creators channel to learn more about your content reach and engagement.

Content Tab in Analytics (Sort by Videos, Shorts, Live or Posts)

Subscribe to the YouTube Creators channel for the latest news, updates, and tips.
Get content tab tips for creators.

Learn the basics

In this article:

You can access your content report and view the following tabs for reach and engagement reports: All, Videos, Shorts, Live, Posts, Playlists, and Podcasts.

View your reach and engagement reports

  1. Sign in to YouTube Studio.
  2. In the left Menu, select Analytics.
  3. From the top menu, select Content.

Note: You can click SEE MORE or ADVANCED MODE to view an expanded analytics report to get specific data, compare performance, and export data.

All

New viewers

This reports viewers who watched something on your channel for the first time in the selected time period.

Returning viewers

This report viewers who have watched your channel previously and returned to watch more.

Subscribers

This report shows the number of subscribers that you gained from each content type: videos, Shorts, live streams, posts, and others. “Others” include subscriptions from YouTube search and your channel page. This info helps you understand what content performs best at turning viewers into subscribers.

Views

This report shows you the number of legitimate views on your content for Shorts, videos, and live streams.

Impressions and how they led to watch time

This report shows you how many times a thumbnail was shown to viewers on YouTube (impressions), how frequently those thumbnails resulted in a view (click-through rate), and how those views ultimately led to watch time. Learn more tips for using impressions and CTR data.

Published content

This report shows the number of videos, Shorts, live streams, and posts you’ve published on YouTube.

Viewers across formats

This report shows the breakdown and overlap of viewers consuming your content by format (videos, Shorts, and live).

How viewers found your content

This report shows you how your viewers found your content within browse features, Shorts feed, suggested videos, YouTube search, channel pages, and others.

Top remixed

This report shows a visual overview of your remix views, total remixes, and top remixed content.

Videos

Key metrics card

This gives you a visual overview of your views, average view duration, impressions, and impressions click-through rate.

Key moments for audience retention

This report shows how well different moments of your video held viewers' attention. You can also use typical retention to compare your 10 latest videos of similar length.

How viewers find your videos

This report shows you how your viewers found your videos within YouTube search, browse features, suggested videos, external, channel pages, and others.

Top videos

This report highlights your most popular videos.

Shorts

Key metrics card

This gives you a visual overview of your views, likes, and subscribers.

How viewers find your Shorts

This report shows you how your viewers found your Shorts within Shorts feed, YouTube search, channel pages, browse features, external, and others.

How many chose to view

The percentage of total viewers who viewed your Shorts versus the percentage who swiped away.

Top Shorts

This report highlights your most popular Shorts.

Top remixed

This report shows a visual overview of your remix views, total remixes, and top remixed content.

Live

Key metrics card

This gives you a visual overview of your views, average view duration, impressions, and impressions click-through rate.

How viewers find your live streams

This report shows you how your viewers found your live streams within browse features, YouTube search, suggested videos, direct or unknown, channel pages, and others.

Top live streams

This report highlights your most popular live streams. You can use the expanded analytics report to view more metrics, like views and impressions.

Concurrent viewers

This report shows you your peak and average concurrent viewers on a given live stream.

Posts

Impressions

This report shows you how many times your post was shown to viewers.

Likes

This report shows how many times viewers liked your Community posts.

Subscribers

This report shows the number of subscribers that you gained from Community posts.

Top posts

This report highlights your most popular posts based on likes or votes.

Playlists

Top playlists card

This report highlights your most popular playlists and helps you compare them. From here, you can access each playlist's analytics. Learn how to access your playlist analytics.

Podcasts

Top podcasts card

This report highlights your most popular podcasts and helps you compare them. Learn more about your podcast’s performance.

Understand types of traffic sources

Traffic to your videos can come from either within YouTube, or from external sources. You can view both on the How viewers find your content (or videos, Shorts, Live) report.

Traffic from within YouTube
Browse features Traffic from the Home, subscriptions, Watch Later, Trending/Explore and other browsing features.
Channel pages Traffic from your YouTube channel or other YouTube channels.
Campaign cards Traffic from content owner campaign cards.
End screens Traffic from creator end screens.
Shorts Traffic from the Shorts vertical viewing experience.
Notifications Traffic from notifications and emails sent to your subscribers.
  Notifications to belled subscribers Traffic from notifications sent to your subscribers who turned on "All notifications" for your channel and turned on YouTube notifications on their device.
  Other app notifications Traffic from personalized notifications, email notifications, Inbox and digests.
Other YouTube features Traffic from within YouTube that doesn't fall in any other category.
Playlists

Traffic from any playlist that included one of your videos. These playlists can be your own playlist or another creator's playlist. This traffic also includes users' "Liked videos" and "Favorite videos" playlists.

Remixed video Traffic from visual remixes of your content.
Sound pages Traffic from the shared audio results page found in the Shorts vertical viewing experience.
Suggested videos Traffic from suggestions that appear next to or after other videos, and from links in video descriptions. You can see specific videos on the “Traffic source: Suggested videos” card of the Reach tab.
Video cards Traffic coming from a card in another video.
YouTube advertising

If your video is used as an ad on YouTube, you’ll see “YouTube advertising” as a traffic source.

Views from skippable ads longer than 10 seconds are counted if they're watched for 30 seconds or until they're finished. Non-skippable ads never qualify as views in YouTube Analytics.

YouTube search Traffic from YouTube search results. You can see specific search terms on the “Traffic source: YouTube Search” card of the Reach tab.
Product pages Traffic from YouTube product pages.
Traffic from external sources
External sources Traffic from websites and apps that have your YouTube video embedded or linked to. You can see specific external sites and sources on the “Traffic source: External” card of the Reach tab.
Direct or unknown sources Traffic from direct URL entry, bookmarks, signed out viewers, and unidentified apps.

Metrics to know

Impressions

How many times your thumbnails were shown to viewers on YouTube through registered impressions.

Impressions click-through-rate

How often viewers watched a video after seeing a thumbnail.

Shown in feed The number of times your Short is shown in the Shorts feed.
Viewed (vs. Swiped away) The percentage of times viewers viewed your Shorts versus swiped away.

Unique viewers

Estimated number of viewers that watched your content within the selected date range.

Average view duration

Estimated average minutes watched per view for the selected video and date range.

Average percentage viewed

Average percentage of a video your audience watches per view.

Watch time (hours)

The amount of time viewers have watched your video.

Post likes The amount of likes your post received.
Post like rate The percentage of viewers that liked your post.
Views from playlist Video views from viewers watching the playlist itself. This is the same metric available externally on the public playlist page.
Total views Total views of all the videos in the playlist, regardless of whether they’re from the playlist or elsewhere. This is only computed for videos that you owned in the playlist.

Was this helpful?

How can we improve it?
Search
Clear search
Close search
Google apps
Main menu
14872401980235525438
true
Search Help Center
true
true
true
true
true
59
false
false