---
title: 'YouTube Analytics Explained — 2026 Beginner’s Guide (What Really Matters)'
source: 'https://youtube.com/watch?v=2g6hbhclpKo'
video_id: '2g6hbhclpKo'
date: 2026-06-15
duration_sec: 0
---

# YouTube Analytics Explained — 2026 Beginner’s Guide (What Really Matters)

> Source: [YouTube Analytics Explained — 2026 Beginner’s Guide (What Really Matters)](https://youtube.com/watch?v=2g6hbhclpKo)

## Summary

This video explains YouTube analytics for beginners, covering which stats matter most, common mistakes, and hidden features. The creator emphasizes focusing on views, watch time, average view duration, and click-through rate, while avoiding obsession with real-time data.

### Key Points

- **Accessing YouTube Studio** [00:42] — Go to studio.youtube.com or click your avatar and select YouTube Studio. Analytics can be viewed for the whole channel or individual videos.
- **Channel Overview Page** [02:04] — Shows total views, watch time, subscribers, and revenue (if monetized) for a selected time frame. The real-time window shows recent activity.
- **Individual Video Analytics** [04:58] — Access via content tab or analytics icon. Key stats: views, watch time, subscribers gained, and average view duration graph showing retention.
- **Click-Through Rate (CTR)** [08:30] — CTR measures how often impressions lead to clicks. A good CTR is better than your channel average. Improve with better thumbnails and titles.
- **Favorite Stat: Views Per Hour** [12:00] — Found under real-time analytics. Shows hourly views for top videos. Useful but can be addictive; avoid obsessing.
- **Comparing Videos to Channel Average** [14:17] — Use the gray shaded area in views/watch time graphs to see if a video outperforms or underperforms your typical performance.
- **Traffic Sources** [16:31] — Found under content analytics. Shows how viewers find your videos (browse features, suggested videos, search, external). Useful for understanding discovery.
- **Using Analytics Correctly** [19:35] — Publish, then check analytics 24-48 hours later. Ask: Are people clicking? (CTR) Are they watching? (average view duration). Make one improvement per video.
- **Hidden Stats: First 24 Hours Performance** [20:17] — In analytics > see more, select 'first 24 hours video performance' to see top and bottom performing videos by views, CTR, average view duration.
- **Custom Metrics: End Screen Clicks** [22:51] — Add end screen element clicks and CTR columns to see which videos perform best on end screens.

### Conclusion

Focus on making more content and improving gradually rather than obsessing over analytics. Volume and time will naturally grow your channel.

## Transcript

YouTube analytics or stats. They are
crucial in understanding how well your
videos are performing, but also your
channel as a whole. In this video, I'm
going to explain which stats are
available to you, which ones are the
most important to follow for beginners.
I'll show you what my favorite stats
are, what mistakes to avoid, and some
hidden but super useful stats that I
just found today. And when I say stats,
I mean analytics. I use those two words
interchangeably. It's important to point
out that YouTube will often change the
exact way you get to certain things in
your YouTube studio as well as on the
YouTube homepage. So, just know that
what I'm showing you today is exactly
the way you do this as of mid December
2025. Let's get into the analytics. So,
you're going to go to YouTube Studio.
So, you do that by either typing
studio.youtube.com youtube.com into your
browser. Or if you start from your
YouTube homepage, you can go up to your
avatar in the upper right, click on
that, and then click YouTube Studio.
Here, real quick, I want to mention
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Clips today. Now, let's get back to the
video. Now that we're in YouTube Studio,
I want to point out that there's two
ways to look at your analytics. You can
either look at them from a channel
perspective, your channel as a whole, or
you can look at the analytics of an
individual video. To get to your channel
analytics, you're going to go into the
left menu here and click on analytics.
From here, you start off on the overview
page. And on that page, you can see the
total number of views you've had for a
given time frame. Okay? So, it's
important to note that you can change
the time frame in the upper right. See
here where it says last 28 days, that's
what it's showing this data for. If I
want to change that, I can just click on
it and select a different period. 7
days, 90 days. As soon as you click on
it, the stats will update. Now, you can
also enter a custom date. So, click on
custom here and then you can select your
date range. And the first time you click
will be the start of your period. So,
let's say I want to start on November
4th and then I want to click on the end
date. So, let's click on the 26th. Okay.
And then you click apply. The stats all
update. And now we can see that this is
a custom date range from November 4th to
the 26th. Okay. Let me just go back to
last 28 days. And the stats update. Now,
what we're seeing here is a summary and
it also shows how much your channel
usually gets. That's important. I'm
going to talk about that a little bit
later. The views. This graph here will
show whatever you click, whichever tab
you click here. Right now, you can see
that the views tab is selected. So, it's
showing views per day. Now, you can also
see that uh there's some icons down
here, and if you hover over them,
they'll tell you what they are. So, this
one, for instance, was a live stream
that I did on that date, November 11th.
And these are actually clickable. So, if
I hover over this, I can come down here
and I can click on that if I want to go
and see more data on that specific
video. Now, these are for the views.
Okay? Okay, so you can see how many
views I got in each day. And if you
hover over, it'll show up. So 7,495
views that day. Again, this is for the
channel as a whole, not the individual,
not any particular video. All right. If
we want to see the watch time, we click
on here. Now, this updates. Now it shows
the watch time. You can see the number
of subscribers you got per day. And
then, of course, if you're monetized,
you will see this fourth tab and the
estimated revenue that you earn on each
given day. Over here is the real time
window, which I'm also going to cover in
a little more detail a little later. Uh,
and it'll show you how many subscribers
you have, your real-time subscriber
count, and the total number of views
you've gotten in the last 48 hours. That
is on the overview page. Let's click on
content. On this page, we can also see
the total views here, but instead of
watch time, it shows us the total
impressions we got. And you can click on
that and see how many you got on any
particular day. You can see the
click-through rate here, which is very
important. uh and the average view
duration of all of your videos combined.
You can also break this down by videos,
shorts, okay, or live streams or posts,
okay? All show you slightly different
information. You can click on the all to
see even more information. New viewers,
regular viewers, subscribers, and so on.
There's so much data available to you.
I'm going to show you which ones are the
most important to to look at. Now, let's
get into the individual videos. And this
is where I want to talk about what you
should be looking at. So to get to the
stats of an individual video, there's a
couple different ways. Anytime you see a
video listed, if you hover over them,
you'll see this analytics icon. Okay, so
let's click on it for this one here.
That'll take you right to that video,
the analytics tab for that video. Let me
just back up for a second. The other way
is you just go to your content tab here.
You click on that and it lists all your
videos. And if you hover over each one
again, you'll see this right here, this
analytics tab. We'll click on that.
That'll take you to the video. For each
video, this is what you should be paying
attention to. Total number of views.
Okay, that's that's the most important
thing. How many views are you getting?
Watch time. Another very important
thing. You can click on that and see
that here. Uh the number of subscribers
you get is interesting. Not super
important, but if you want to know where
your subscribers are coming from, this
is how you find out. Again, for all of
the things that we're looking at here,
all the stats, you can always click up
here and and change your time period.
So, in this case, since published is
selected, but you can click it and
change it. So, if you want to see how it
performed in the first 24 hours, click
here and it'll give you the update.
That's how many subscribers it got, how
much watch time, and how many views it
got. Let me just switch this back to
since published again. And now I want to
come down to the bottom here. Just
scroll down and to this section here.
This is an very important graph. This is
your average view duration graph. Okay?
So, this will show you exactly when
people are leaving your video. For
example, if I just put this anywhere,
let's put it here. 57% of the people who
click to watch this video are still
watching 2 minutes and 5 seconds into
the video. Okay? Very valuable
information. Another piece of valuable
information, which they summarize down
at the bottom here, 70% of my viewers
are still watching at around the 30
secondond mark. And that's shown in the
graph here by this shaded area, this
blue area. Uh, and then there's summary
up here. So, average view duration of
this video is 3 minutes and 51 seconds.
That's lower than my norm, but it's a
shorter video. And you can see here the
video is 7 minutes and 59 seconds long.
You can also see that down here. And
something else to look for is any dips
in this graph. So, I can kind of see one
here. It's it's subtle, but it's there.
So, I suspect I said something around
here that caused people to leave. Okay.
So, if I hover over there, I can see the
time was 4 minutes and 55 seconds in.
So, what I should do is if if I want to
learn from this is go back to that
video, play it and go to that timestamp
4 minutes 55 seconds in, maybe back it
up 5 or 10 seconds and play it and see
what I was talking about. see what was
going on in the video and try to figure
out well say to myself, "Okay, people
left in this section of the video and
then try to understand why." Okay,
that's how you learn. Something else to
look for is if you ever see a spike on
these graphs that indicates that people
went back to rewatch something several
times. So, you may see something like
that happen. For example, if you put a a
graph or some numbers, some stats up on
the screen, but they're not on the
screen for long enough. people may have
to pause and go back and rewatch that
section of the video. Or if you said
something really funny that they want to
or or showed something really funny that
people want to see again, they may go
back and watch that again. So, views,
watch time, average view duration, all
super important to beginners. One more
that I want to show you. Let's come up
here and we can go to reach. It'll show
you how many impressions you got. I
don't tend to pay any attention to that,
but this one, the click-through rate or
CTR. So, let's click on that and we can
see what our CTR is for this video. So,
4.8% is overall. Again, it's since
published. And what that means is 4.8%
of the time that an impression is shown
either on an end screen or uh on the
YouTube homepage, right? Whenever an
impression of my of my video or my
thumbnail and title is shown to
somebody, I get an impression. 4.8% 8%
of the time people are clicking on it to
watch. Now, that's an average. So, you
can see that there was a spike in the
beginning. That happens quite often,
especially if you have a number of
subscribers because your subscribers are
the most interested. And if they've set
themselves up to be notified when you
come out with a new video, they may be
very interested in seeing your video.
They'll click on it when they see it.
So, that's partly why it's usually
higher in the beginning because it's a
new video. People are excited to see it.
In this video, my CTR was 7% in the
first day. Second day it was down to
3.9% and then so you can kind of follow
it along. One thing I'll point out about
CTR. A lot of people ask me what is a
good CTR? A good CTR is one that's
better than what you normally get. Okay?
So you kind of have to look at your own
videos to see to see where you normally
are and try to improve. And the way you
improve your CTR is by making better
thumbnails and better titles that people
want to click. But just know that that's
not that's only one small piece of the
entire uh pie here because there's no
point in having a good thumbnail and a
good title if people get to your video
and then don't watch it. And that's
where average view duration comes in.
And again, that is back here in the
overview tab. Scroll down. Average view
duration is here. So again, you want to
compare your average view duration to
your average average view duration or
you know you you'll start to get used to
what it looks like for your typical
videos. Now usually the typical
retention is shown on this graph. For
this video it's not for some reason.
Let's go take a look at another video.
Let's go to this one. Analytics. We'll
scroll down. Here we go. So in this
video we can see a a gray area. That's
the average. A typical video would would
be in that gray area. For this video,
250 into the video, 47% are still
watching. Um, but you can you can kind
of hover over this and see that this
video kind of rode on the inside of that
gray area the whole way along. Something
else I want to show you for each
individual vid video, when you have
views selected, you will see the number
of views that you got on each individual
or what your total was for each day. But
you'll also see that shaded gray area
down. In this case, it's down below
because this was a really
well-performing video. So in this case,
in the first 20 days, it had 25,000
views. But typically, in the first 20
days, my videos would have anywhere
between 4.5,000 to 9.6,000
views. So that's a good indication that
this was a good video, right? My views
were much higher than normal. Watch
time. If I click there, also much higher
than normal. number of subscribers. It
doesn't show you normally what you get,
but you can see how how the number of
subscribers I gained over time for this
video. Uh, and then of course the
estimated revenue. There are a ton of
stats in here or analytics that I don't
really ever look at. Okay, I have some
favorites though and I want to share
those with you. My number one favorite
is views per hour, okay, of my most
recent videos. And the way I can find
that is go to your analytics tab for the
entire channel. And then over on the
right under real time, you can scroll to
the bottom and see the see more button.
Click on that. That'll show you how many
views you're getting per hour of your
top performing videos at any given time.
So in this case, uh we can see that this
video here is getting 87 views an hour.
And you can see a graph over the last 60
minutes as to when the views are coming
in. I find this super uh helpful to take
a look at, but I caution you, [laughter]
you can get into a habit of looking at
this page and kind of getting mesmerized
by it and kind of watching it uh advance
in real time. That's a huge waste of
time. [laughter]
Uh there's no reasonable reason to do
that. Um, I happen to like stats and
numbers and I don't mind seeing this.
But I will tell you that if I leave this
screen on for too long, I'll just kind
of stare at it and I won't be as
productive as I should be otherwise. So,
know that this is here. It's a fantastic
thing to look at every once in a while.
Just don't get obsessed with it. But
again, you can see how many views per
hour your videos are getting. So, if you
want to check this every once in a while
to see which videos are performing the
best, it'll tell you what the date was
of the video. Um, and you can sort by
the last 48 hours or by the last 60
minutes just by clicking. So, click last
48 hours. Uh, and it sorts that way. If
I click here, it'll sort by last 60
minutes. Now, if you want more
information on any of these videos, you
can hover over a video like this. And
then you can click to go to its
analytics if you want. Okay? Or view the
video on YouTube. Okay? That's if you
hover over it first. But if you don't
hover over it first and you just click
it, that'll take you to a similar graph
just for that video. Okay, last 60
minutes, last 48 hours, and you can
hover over these to see how many views
they got in any one of the hours. You
can see how how deep of a dive this
could be and how lost you can get in all
these analytics. There's a lot of stuff
here that that really isn't going to
help you grow your channel. Ultimately,
the way to grow your channel is to stop
looking at this, go make another video.
My next favorite stat, and I've already
talked about this a little bit, is how I
compare my videos to my channel. Quite
simply, I'll go into content, and you
know, I can look at my most recent
video, go to the analytics for that
video. This one was just two days ago,
and I look at this graph. So, it's got
3,600 views in the first two days and 26
minutes. Uh, but typically, I get
4.2,000 2,000 to 6.3,000 views. So, this
video is underperforming. Does that mean
it's a it's not a good video or it's a
worse video than my typical videos? Not
necessarily. There's other factors at
play here. For instance, I posted this
video on a Saturday. I know from uh
doing this for the last couple years
that when I post on the weekend, my
videos don't tend to do as well. and
I've done it enough that I feel like I
have enough data to be able to make that
conclusion. If you only ever do that
once, then the data you posted may not
be the reason it's not doing well. It
might be the content. It's just not
something people want to watch. Okay?
So, you have to be careful of that. You
can't make uh rash decisions based on
like one data point. You have to kind of
gather this stuff up over time. But I've
come to know that if I post on a
Saturday or a Sunday, my videos don't
tend to do as well. Um, so I kind of
expected this. But that's okay because
in the grand scheme of things, like over
the lifetime of this video, how it does
in the first day or two doesn't matter
that much. It's more about ratios,
right? like it probably doesn't do as
well because, and this is the way I
think about it, my my typical viewers or
subscribers maybe don't watch videos as
much on the weekends or they don't watch
my videos as much on the weekends. Okay?
But over the lifetime of a video, with
any luck, uh, and hopefully I'll gain
more viewers to see that video and maybe
they will watch it at other times. Okay?
And also my subscribers and and typical
viewers may become aware of this video
once Monday or Tuesday rolls around and
they see that I put a video out on the
weekend. So try not to get too wrapped
up in the day that you post a video. Uh
that said, it's good to be consistent
and try to do it as consistently as you
can. My next favorite stat is traffic
sources. We're going to click on the
analytics tab. Then we're going to click
on content. And if we scroll down, we
will see how viewers find your videos.
Okay, this is super helpful. So, browse
features 51%. Uh, suggested videos 14%,
YouTube search, external sources,
channel pages, and others. Okay, super
useful. Now, if I want to drill down on
external, I can click on this tab and we
can see that all of the 6.7% of my
external traffic, 74% of that 6.7%
comes from Google search. All right,
Google owns YouTube. So that almost
makes sense that that a lot of the
traffic comes through Google as well.
You ever do a Google search and you see
that at the top some video options
appear? Those they're pulling those
directly from YouTube. And my other
favorite stat, if I scroll up here and
go to audience and I'll scroll down and
I like seeing uh what percentage of my
viewers are new viewers, casual viewers
or regular viewers. Some common beginner
mistakes to avoid. Stop refreshing your
data and obsessing over it all the time.
>> [laughter]
>> I sometimes fall into this trap and I
was worse before. I'm a little bit
better now. But basically, a watch pot
never boils. Okay? So, you're not doing
yourself any favors by just staring at
your stats. Go make another video.
Comparing your channel size to others,
that is not helpful. Every channel grows
at a different pace. Same thing about
subscriber count and watch hour count. I
know those are important to get
monetized. You do need 1,000 subscribers
and 4,000 watch hours in your last 365
days to get monetized, but obsessing
over those is really not going to help.
What helps is making more content and
just trying to make your content better
each time you make a new video. Don't
make drastic changes after 24 hours.
Okay? A lot of people I hear from are
looking at their stats and they're
looking how their latest video is doing.
And let's say it's is riding below the
average line. Um and and so they feel
like, "Oh, I must have done something
wrong. Bad thumbnail, bad title. Um I
need to change it." Try to avoid doing
that. Um you're you're really not, you
know, YouTube is testing your video from
the moment you uh post it uh onwards,
right? And as soon as you make changes
like that, you could interrupt that
whole thing. I would just let YouTube do
its thing with that video. Once you post
a video, no matter how it's doing,
consider it posted. Your time is always
going to be better spent making more
content and just trying to get better at
making more content. The more content
you make, the better you're going to be
at making content. Okay? So, and the
better your content is, the more people
will watch it and the longer they will
watch it for. And the longer they watch
your content for, the more views you'll
get, the more impressions you YouTube
will notice that they'll give you more
impressions, you know, in your future
videos, and everything will start to
grow. So, focus on making new content
rather than making changes to your
already posted content. Here's how to
use analytics the right way. Publish
your video, then check your analytics 24
to 48 hours later. I don't always do
that. I often will look at it before
that, but I'm not doing myself any
favors by doing that. Ask yourself
simple questions. Are people clicking on
my thumbnail? So, CTR is where you go to
find that. And are people watching my
video? Are they sticking around? Average
view duration is where you go to find
that. And when you're looking at your
analytics, try to try to find one thing
that you can do better. Like if you can
if you can see something that's not
going well, try to identify something in
your video that you can do better and
just try to make one improvement on your
next video. One improvement per video
and the baby steps will add up. I want
to show you some hidden but very useful
stats that I haven't mentioned yet, but
I found these recently and they're
pretty cool. What you're going to do is
go to your analytics tab, then click
down here to see more. So, this is going
to give us a summary, okay, a summary
views by content, and it's going to list
all of my videos. The time period is
shown over here. So, this is for the
last 28 days, which we can change if we
want. And on this page, it gives us a
breakdown of the total views that we've
gotten in the last 28 days. And it shows
us where those views came from, okay?
Which video uh is responsible for the
views, views, watch hours, subscribers,
and so on. And right now we can see this
this uh uh chart is sorted by views. We
can see that by this arrow here. And if
we click something else like watchtime,
we can sort by watch hours instead.
Okay? Or sort by number of subscribers.
So for instance, I can tell that in the
last 28 days, this video was responsible
for most of my new subscribers. But what
I want to show you actually is up here.
This is I I just found this recently.
And if you click on this, it lists some
popular uh stats that you can see. So,
top content in the last 28 days, that's
what we just looked at. Traffic sources
in the last 28 days. You can quickly and
very quickly and easily get to that
information. Top geographies in the last
28 days. It'll list all the countries.
But this one here, first 24 hours video
performance. And check this out. So, it
lists, let's let's go down here first.
Top performing videos, top five. Okay?
And then the bottom performing videos.
And it shows us the views, which I've
sorted on here right now. The
impressions uh impression
click-through rate. So, CTR, average
view duration, and average percent
viewed, but they're also shown up top
here. So, top performing videos 1 2 3 4
5. You can notice as I hover over them,
they get highlighted in the uh chart
above. And then we can highlight up
here, and it'll show us. So, this is a
real handy way to very quickly at a
glance look and see which of your videos
did the best in their first 24 hours.
Something else I want to show you. If I
click here and go back to the top
content, we can change the metrics that
we see. So, it's showing us views, watch
time subscribers revenue impressions
and so on. We can hide some of these.
Hide a metric. So, let's say uh revenue.
Let's let's hide that metric. That
column is now gone. But we can add other
ones, too. So you can click here under
metrics and there are so so many look if
I scroll down and all of these dropdowns
list other ones. Okay. And what I think
is super neat is if you go down here to
end screens right at the bottom. Click
on that end screen element clicks. So
we'll click on that. Click apply. End
screen element clicks is added and
sorted by that. And I can see now that
on my end screens, these videos are
popping up when my end screen's clicked.
If we go back in here, let's go all the
way to the bottom again. Endcreen
elements shown and clicks per end screen
element shown. Let's highlight both of
those and click apply. And they all get
added right here. And you can see the
the CTR, right? The click-through rate
of those endcreen elements. Super
useful. But uh again, don't obsess over
this. So like have a look around and and
and you can see some things, but don't
get too lost in this. A couple final
words. You may get discouraged when you
get into your analytics and see that,
you know, there's not much in there.
You're not getting many views. Your job
in the early days is not to optimize
everything. It's to learn. Okay? Your
job in the early days is to learn. It's
to make videos, whether they're regular
videos or shorts or or whatever you're
trying to do. Make videos, upload them,
make more videos. The act of doing that
is what is going to improve you as a
content creator. The numbers will
follow. The stats will grow over time
and with volume. The more you create and
put on your channel, you're building a
base. You're building a library that in
the future as as people come in and
become subscribers or viewers of your
content, uh they will see a growing
library. Like imagine a year from now if
you post a video a week for a year
that's 50 videos. After you make video
50 videos, you're going to be so much
better at making videos. So that your
50th is probably going to have a higher
average view duration. Your thumbnails
will probably be better. So you're
probably going to have a higher
click-through rate, right? And
therefore, YouTube will notice all this
and they're going to push your video
more. You're going to get more views.
You're going to get more watch hours.
Okay? And not only that, as you get more
subscribers, they will see this library
of 50 videos and growing and they'll go
back and they'll start watching some of
your back catalog and you'll start
getting comments like, "Oh, I wanted to
see where like I wanted to see how you
started, like how good of a creator you
were when you started, how good were
your videos back then versus now." Or,
"I'm just interested in seeing how you
evolved and I'm going to binge all of
your videos." Right? You'll get
subscribers like that. So with volume
and with time, your numbers will
increase. They they have to. That's
that's what happens. That's the way it
happens. So try not to get discouraged
if your numbers aren't uh where you
think they should be. Stop comparing
yourself to other channels because that
doesn't even matter. Um just focus on
your own thing. I hope you found this
helpful. My name is Rob. If you're new
here, welcome. And if you want more
content like this, just let me know in
the comments below. And uh maybe that'll
be my next video. All right. Thanks.
Talk soon. Bye.