YouTube videos are monitored for various metrics such as likes, dislikes, subscribers gained/lost, annotations, cards/end-screen impressions, video insights (like the total time watched), number of views, and graphs to understand how well a video is performing in retaining viewers until the end.
Engagements
Likes: The number of times your video was liked.
Dislikes: The number of times your video was disliked.
Comments: The number of comments received on the video.
Shares: The number of times users shared the video by clicking the share button.
Subscribers gained: The number of users who subscribed to your channel after you posted the video.
Subscribers lost: The numbers of users who unsubscribed to your channel after you posted the video.
Cards and end screen
Cards are added to make videos more interactive. These cards can be used to feature a playlist, video, channel, or links, or to encourage users to participate in a poll. End screens can be added to the last 5 to 20 seconds of the video. They can be used to promote other videos or playlists relevant to the content and to encourage users to subscribe.
Annotation click-through rate: Annotations are additional images and text that you can add to each video to make viewers interact at specific points when it's being displayed. The annotation click-through rate is the ratio of annotations that users click to the total number of clickable annotations that were displayed on the screen.
Annotation close rate: The ratio of annotations that users closed to the total number of clickable annotations that were displayed on the screen.
End screen clicks: The total number of times the end screen was clicked.
End screen impressions: The total number of times the end screen was displayed on the screen.
Card clicks: The number of times the cards were clicked.
Card click rate: The ratio of the number of times the cards were clicked to the total number of times cards were displayed on the screen.
Card teaser clicks: The number of times users clicked on the card teaser (which is the text or message added to the end card), encouraging users to click on it.
Card teaser click rate: The ratio of the number of times the card teasers were clicked to the total number of times they were displayed on the screen.
Card impressions: The number of times the cards were displayed on the screen.
Card teaser impressions: The number of times the card teasers were displayed on the screen.
Video view insights
Views: The number of times the video was viewed.
Average view duration: The average length (in seconds) the video was played by a user.
Estimated minutes watched: The total time the video was watched.
Age and gender graph: The distribution of viewers by age and gender.
Gender graph: The distribution of viewers by gender.
Views by country: The distribution of viewers by the country the video was played in.
Search keywords: The search keywords that brought users to the specific video.
Audience retention graph: This graph shows two metrics, the audience watch ratio and relative retention performance.
- Audience watch ratio: The ratio of the number of times a portion of the video was watched to the total number of views of the video. If the ratio is good for the first few seconds of the video but gradually drops, then it's understood that viewers weren't interested enough to continue watching the video. For example, if a video is watched 10 times, but the views crossed 50% only five times, then the audience retention ratio for the first 50% of the video will be 1, and the second 50% of the video will be 0.5.
- Relative retention performance: A metric that helps understand how well a video retains its viewers until the end, in comparison with other YouTube videos of similar length. It's depicted as a curve between the low-average-high metric.