Measuring Success and Impact

SUCCESSFUL YOUTUBE CHANNELS USE METRICS AND DATA ANALYSIS TO create successful videos. In the following section, we’ll review YouTube’s standardized metrics to measure success and and we’ll also discuss how to use YouTube analytics to improve channel programming.

How do we define success?

View and subscriber counts are only a superficial measure of success on YouTube. In fact, YouTube as a platform optimizes for WATCH TIME, or the amount of time a viewer spends watching your content. This means that YouTube itself considers your channel successful if it can hold viewers’ attention. More watch time=more revenue and improved performance in YouTube’s algorithm. It makes sense: The platform’s goal is to maximize ad revenue, and YouTube can do that by assessing your content’s ability to consistently retain viewers.

How do we measure success internally?

The health of a YouTube channel is generally measured in views per month and in overall audience engagement. The following sets of questions will help you measure success and plan for future programming.

When thinking about your views per month, ask yourself:

  • Do most of my views come from one video or from videos across our library?

  • Do tweaks to my upload schedule increase overall monthly viewership?



  • Is my viewership on an upward trend or downward trend?

When thinking about progress around audience engagement, ask yourself:

  • Are my viewers converting to subscribers? 

  • Does my audience watch our videos all the way through? 

  • Do my viewers share our videos with their friends? 

  • Is the audience engaged enough to comment or click through to another video on the end card?

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I need to focus on engaging the audience while we grow our channel, thinks Ben. He starts to brainstorm formats that fit his organization’s brand and also stimulate conversation, similar to the educational science format “Sci Show” or The New York Times’ video format after “36 Hours”