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.
Watch 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)
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
- Sign in to YouTube Studio.
- In the left menu, select Analytics.
- 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 reports 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 that 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 the 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 either from 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 personalised notifications, email notifications, inbox and digests. | |
| Other YouTube features | Traffic from within YouTube that doesn't fall into 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 'Favourite videos' playlists. |
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| 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. |
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| 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. | |
| External sources | Traffic from websites and apps that have your YouTube video embedded or that link to it. 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. |
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Impressions click-through rate |
How often viewers watched a video after seeing a thumbnail. |
| Shown in feed | The number of times that your Short is shown in the Shorts feed. |
| Viewed (vs swiped away) | The percentage of times that viewers viewed your Shorts versus swiped away. |
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Unique viewers |
Estimated number of viewers that watched your content within the selected date range. |
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Average view duration |
Estimated average minutes watched per view for the selected video and date range. |
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Average percentage viewed |
Average percentage of a video that your audience watches per view. |
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Watch time (hours) |
The amount of time for which viewers have watched your video. |
| Post likes | The amount of likes that your post received. |
| Post like rate | The percentage of viewers that liked your post. |
| Views from playlist | Video views from viewers who watched the playlist itself. This is the same metric available externally on the public playlist page. |
| Total views | Total views of all of 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. |