If you have already had doubts about whether YouTube is delivering your videos to platform users, or if your content and titles are efficient, now you can find out (or at least understand it more clearly).
A few months ago, YouTube started implementing YouTube Studio (still in beta version), with the purpose of replacing Creator Studio, the panel where you find the tool.
In the new version, some old requests from creators were finally taken care of.
We are talking about impressions and CTR (click through rate, for its acronym in English) which is the rate of clicks, and you can check them in the Reach tab among viewers.
For those who have already analyzed online ad data, these terms are not new. But if you don’t know what it is, we are going to explain it to you and show you how to get the most out of those metrics.
What is the number of impressions and CTR?
In short, the number of impressions represents how many times your content has been shown on the platform, either through searches, suggested videos or even directly on the channel. This number expresses the potential of your video.
Click-through rate refers to the percentage of those impressions that were clicked on by the user. This is a number referring to how often viewers watched the video after seeing the thumbnail and title somewhere on YouTube (external sources, such as sites and other social networks, don’t count yet).
In this way, you can have a video with 7.5 thousand impressions (number of times it appeared on the screen for the user) and a CTR of 4.7% (how often these users clicked on the video). .
The total may result in only 1.3 thousand views (times the video was actually viewed).
There is no standard parameter for what click-through rate is ideal or what number of impressions is good for a certain number of views. As always, it all depends on various factors.
To make it clear, let’s do an offline analogy:
Imagine that YouTube is an interactive restaurant with the proposal of serving culinary products (here, representing the videos) created by various chefs (who would be the content creators).
The waiter (algorithm) brings the products to the tables, according to the information that the consumers (spectators) register in an interactive menu, selecting the flavors and ingredients that they like the most (this would be the user data on the platform, obtained through history, previous searches, etc.).
In that case, as a chef, you know that it is no use making just a tasty dish, you have to make it attractive in the eyes of the consumer, right?
After all, no one risks eating something that doesn’t look good.
It’s the same with videos, no one will know if your content is good if it’s not engaging in the first place.
This is where the quality of the thumbnail and title comes in.
The importance of the thumbnail and the title in your videos
To understand the importance of analyzing the quality of the thumbnail and the title, let’s go back to the example of the restaurant that we gave at the beginning of this post.
Let’s assume that you’ve done your surveys and you’ve noticed that a lot of people in the restaurant like the desserts and also like the pumpkins.
So, you create something based on that data and make a delicious pumpkin candy, making it amazing.
Thus, the waiter will fill a tray with your products (because he knows that consumers have already shown that they like those ingredients) and will display those dishes on the tables.
In the analogy:
- Every time a person sees the candy on the tray, it is an impression.
- Every time a person takes a piece of candy, it is a click.
- Every time a person eats the candy, we get a preview.
- If the waiter notices that the sweet is a success, he himself will seek to offer more, that is, the impressions increase.
It is important to remember that when the waiter is encouraged by the good performance of a creation and begins to exhibit more and more of these beautiful desserts to the public, it is likely that the increase in consumption will not rise in the same proportion as the offers (impressions).
In that case, the click-through rate, i.e. the “rate of people eating the candy” decreases.
It is important to highlight that despite the fact that the CTR drops in a situation of this type, it is not a bad event, since there is an increase in consumption, which is the most important thing.
This would be just an expected behavior of the click rate in relation to the increase in impressions.
In the event that your pumpkin candy is not attractive, although very tasty, the waiter would initially display them on the tray with the same animation, but it would probably not attract the eyes of the consumers (low impression). These, therefore, would not consume the products (lower CTR, click rate) and would not eat them (lower number of views).
Realizing this dynamic, the waiter would start to offer less and less of these units, since they did not show interest, even if you, who plays the chef, ensure an excellent taste.
The same thing happens if you have a , but it doesn’t stand out because of the thumbnail and the title.
YouTube’s algorithm understands that your creation is not good and that it can discourage the public from continuing to consume. Thus, the offer (impressions) on YouTube falls.
To complicate the situation, in the case of videos, it is worth remembering that other factors come into play, for example: commitment or engagement, which can be measured through comments, number of times it is shared, retention of views and I like”.
It is not difficult to transpose these concepts to our example of the interactive restaurant.
Consider the following:
- Praise (comments),
- Pat on the back (I like it)
- Suggestions to friends so that they also try the sweet from that restaurant (as many times as someone shares),
- And last and most importantly, the fact that people end up eating the whole candy (retention).
Even knowing how many people consumed just one unit (unique viewers: another new metric) can be interesting.
Relationship between impressions and engagement CTR
To relate impressions and CTR of engagement, let’s go to some fictitious examples:
In a next case, you have done your surveys and realized that he really likes dulce de leche. Your audience also really likes shrimp.
Thus, in a moment of little lucidity, a “great” idea is born: dulce de leche with shrimp.
In the event that it is a good concept, since the data shows that, in fact, the public really likes those two things.
In this way, you make your innovative dulce de leche with shrimp and make them look pretty.
You then deliver them to the restaurant and the waiter offers them to people.
The beautiful creation attracts a lot of attention from the public (high number of impressions) and many people take them to test them (high CTR).
At this point, the waiter is super happy and is already preparing to go and offer more units, but he notices something different:
- Some consumers taste the sweet and leave half on the plate (low retention),
- Others, as soon as they put it in their mouths… they spit it out (it doesn’t even count as visualization),
- Others get up from the table and leave (end of session),
- No one offers them to friends (low share rate) and
- Conversations cease, leading to an embarrassed silence (very few comments).
In such a situation, I don’t even need to tell you that the waiter will practically stop offering your sweets.
Not that I’m going to throw everything away, but you can be sure that it’s going to be very difficult to find those delicacies that are on display there.
And that’s what YouTube does. If the platform realizes that despite the demand and clicks, the public does not like your videos, the algorithm goes on to deliver less and less of your content.
The moral is that it is useless to analyze data separately or to work only on one point.
For your video to be a success, you will need to meet the interests of the public, create an attractive thumbnail and title (so that the public wants to click) and even more, receive quality content that guarantees viewer satisfaction and , consequently, engagement, leaving the algorithm happy and working in your favor.
The good side is that with impression metrics and click-through rate you can better understand what is happening to your content and how it is received by the public.
Are you already analyzing these metrics?
Tell us in the comments what are the .
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