What are video analytics?
Video analytics refer to all data generated from audience responses to published video content. It’s commonly divided into two broad categories: insights about the types of viewers engaging with your content and metrics that measure how well your content performed.
- Demographics: Video analytics gather insights into the viewers who engage with your content. This includes their location, gender, age, device type, and referral source. By providing information on who watches your video, demographics help you personalize your video campaigns for increased effectiveness.
- Metrics: This type of video analytics provides quantitative data on how well your video performed. This includes views, average watch time, and completion rate.
Why do video analytics matter?
Video analytics help you evaluate your video’s success against your goals. They can also help you ideate more effective strategies or objectives.
They show you who your audience is
Modern video-sharing platforms can collect meaningful data on your audiences. Now, data collection goes beyond typical demographic information like age, gender, and location. It also covers behaviors, such as preferred device types, formats, subtitle languages, and favorite channels. Demographic and behavioral data allows you to tailor content for your audience for increased relevance and engagement.
They measure video marketing performance
Video analytics let you assess the effectiveness of campaign efforts. For example, let’s say your video suffered low completion rates. Because you hypothesize that the long introduction is to blame, you cut the next video’s introduction down by 10 seconds. Analytics will tell you whether or not the decision was effective.
They help you determine competitiveness
Some metrics, such as view count and engagement, are publicly visible. You can compare your metrics against competitors to see where you stand in the market. You can also read comments to better understand what viewers like or dislike in your competitors.
They help you set realistic goals
Video analytics provide insights into past performance, helping you set realistic goals for future campaigns. With data to support predictions, you can more accurately estimate future growth. For instance, if consistent video releases drive a 10% monthly subscriber increase, the data helps forecast subscriber gains from tailored content.
They cultivate viewer and stakeholder trust
Video analytics aren’t just for improving your marketing campaigns — they also give stakeholders concrete proof of your success. Your credibility might compel them to provide more funding and resources.
Viewers also find videos with high view counts more credible. Public analytics, such as views and engagement, prove the audience’s sentiments toward your campaigns. Your transparency then increases brand trust.
They help you optimize your content
Analytics generate actionable information for improving your campaign strategies. You can use data on audience behavior to determine what attracts viewers, what fosters loyalty, and what drives action. Then, you can use metrics to set targets and assess success.
For example, if you aim to increase views, and your data shows that most of your views come from high school students, you can align your release schedule with the end of class and use casual, straightforward language in your scripts to boost views.
12 Types of analytics brands should monitor for their videos
Maximizing the benefits of video marketing requires leveraging demographic data and audience interaction metrics. To help you optimize your content, we’ve listed common video analytics and what they contribute to your video marketing strategies.
Audience traits
Analytics platforms provide information about your audience. Basic demographic data collected by video-sharing platforms include:
- Age
- Gender
- Location
- Top subtitles
- Education level
- Job title
- Relationship status
Audience demographics help you determine who is interested in your videos. They also show whether your target audiences are responsive to tailored content. If not, you should turn to analytics to identify targeting opportunities that the company might have previously overlooked. For example, if you notice your videos attracting younger viewers than anticipated, you could bring the analytics to the team’s attention as an opportunity to adjust your marketing strategy.
Audience behavior
Data on audience behavior provides deeper insights into the people watching your videos. Audience behavior data goes beyond viewer characteristics; it also reveals how your audience interacts with video-sharing platforms.
Types of audience behavior data collected by video-sharing platforms include:
- Where they found your video
- What time they go online
- Preferred video format
- Preferred device type
- Other videos watched
- Other channels watched
- Topics liked
Audience behavior data also lets you align your video marketing strategies with your audience’s watching habits. Deeper personalization improves your likelihood of resonating with viewers, increasing engagement and brand loyalty.
Examples of marketing strategies that account for behavior include:
- Aligning release schedules with the average time users go online
- Collaborating with channels your audience also watches
- Optimizing video layouts according to preferred video formats and device types
- Creating content related to the audience’s liked topics
Impression count
Impression count refers to the number of times your video is encountered as a thumbnail. It measures your video’s visibility. A low impression count indicates that you might need to rethink your SEO strategy and align thumbnails and titles with what viewers search for. It might also mean that you need to make a greater effort to promote your video on other channels, such as your website, social media accounts, paid video advertising, or partner posts.
View count
The view count is the most straightforward measurement of a video’s visibility. It measures the number of times a video has been watched regardless of completion. The metric includes paid views and rewatches from repeat viewers.
Some video-sharing platforms are stricter when counting views. YouTube, for example, counts views only from users who watch the video for more than thirty seconds. Additionally, it removes views from users who leave spam comments or display bot-like watching behavior.
The view count helps you assess whether your video is compelling enough to attract audiences. However, they don’t tell the whole story. You need to look at deeper metrics, such as watch time, audience retention rate, and completion rate, to determine whether your audience finds your video compelling.
Unique viewers
Because view count also counts rewatches, it cannot give you an accurate picture of your audience size. A better metric would be unique viewers, which counts the number of unique individuals watching your videos. By excluding rewatches, the unique viewers metric avoids overestimating your video’s reach.
Watch time
Watch time measures the amount of time users dedicate to watching your video. There are two ways to measure watch time: total watch time and average watch time.
- Total watch time gets the sum of watch time across all views. For example, if 10,000 viewers watched your 1-hour video to completion, your total watch time would be 10,000 hours. While this metric alone tells you little about viewing behaviors, YouTube uses total watch time across all posted videos as a required qualification for content creators applying for monetization.
- Average watch time or average view duration is a more useful metric for analyzing how viewers interact with your content. It divides total watch time by the total number of viewers to estimate how long each individual user spends on your video. For example, if you have 5,000 viewers and a total watch time of 1,000 hours, you can estimate that the average viewer spent 12 minutes watching your video.
Watch time helps you assess your ability to keep viewers engaged. An average watch time that falls short of the video’s actual length indicates an inability to hold the user’s attention. Try to experiment with video lengths to determine whether the issue is the content, its duration, or a combination of both. If users consistently exit after a length of time, condense your content to align with their attention spans.
Watch time is a key factor in visibility. YouTube and TikTok prioritize watch time in their recommendation algorithms, which means they’re more likely to promote videos with higher watch times to new viewers.
Audience retention rate
Audience retention rate is another metric for assessing a video’s ability to keep the viewer engaged. It is a percentage that denotes how much of your video the audience has watched, on average. Like watch time, audience retention contributes to visibility. YouTube is more likely to recommend videos with high audience retention rates.
The audience retention rate contextualizes watch time with your video length, making it a better engagement metric than watch time alone.
For example, a 10-minute video with an average watch time of 9 minutes would have an audience retention rate of 90%. Meanwhile, a 1-hr video with an average watch time of 30 minutes would yield an audience retention rate of 50%, indicating lower retention despite having a longer watch time.
You should use the audience retention rate to identify issues in video length and pacing. Lower audience retention rates can imply that your video is too long or that parts of your content are irrelevant to viewer concerns. You can also look into key moments to determine which specific issues cause your audience to drop off. We discuss key moments in the section below.
Key moments
Key moments provide additional information on audience retention. They tell you which specific moments held or lost user attention. There are four types of key moment metrics:
- The intro percentage tells you how much of your audience continued watching your video after the first 30 seconds. Low intro percentages typically indicate a mismatch between the intro content and the expectations created by the thumbnail and title. Your intro should assure the viewer they’ll get what they clicked for.
- Top moments are specific points in your video where nearly all viewers stayed engaged without dropping off. You can analyze trends in top moments across your channel to determine what hooks your viewers.
- Spikes are parts of your video that are commonly rewatched or shared. Pay attention to the deeper reason behind the spike; sometimes, parts of your video compel rewatches not because they are compelling but because they are unclear. For example, a section with poor audio quality might cause spikes as viewers attempt to understand what was said. Meanwhile, if the key reason for a spike is genuine interest, you can use the data to optimize future videos.
- Dips are parts of your video that compel many viewers to quit or skip. Analyze your dips to determine what causes viewers to lose interest.
Completion rate
Completion rate refers to the percentage of viewers who watched your video to completion. Like the audience retention rate, it measures your video’s ability to keep audiences engaged. Naturally, short-form videos tend to have higher completion rates than long-term videos.
Completion rate is a similar metric to audience retention rate. You can use it to determine whether your message and delivery align with viewer interest and watching behaviors. Like with audience retention rate, it’s best to look into key moments for deeper insight into what makes your video work.
Click-through rate (CTR)
CTR can refer to two metrics:
- The ratio of viewers who click on your video to the total number of viewers who see your thumbnail.
- The ratio of viewers who click on a link in your video to the total number of viewers
The former measures how compelling your title and thumbnail combination is. Low click-through rates might suggest one of the following:
- Your title is misaligned with audience concerns
- Your title does not clearly convey your video’s intent
- Your title is too long
- Your thumbnail is visually unappealing
- Your thumbnail does not clearly reflect the content of your video
Make sure that your video title accurately represents your video’s subject. Prioritize concision, as video-sharing platforms often cut off long titles. Meanwhile, ensure that your thumbnail hints at the most compelling parts of your video in a visually appealing way. Avoid complex designs — size limitations might shrink the details and create visual confusion.
Meanwhile, the latter measures the effectiveness of your call to action. Ensure that your call to action clearly states how users would benefit from the desired action. For example, if you want your users to sign up for a newsletter, your call to action should explain how your newsletter addresses user concerns.
Additionally, you should insert your call to action in a strategic placement. Use watch time or audience retention rate to determine where users typically drop off and find a way to integrate your CTA within that duration.
According to the video marketing platform Wistia, conversion rates are highest when placed mid-roll or around the fourth quarter of the video. This placement targets viewers who have invested significant time in the video but have yet to complete it fully. When timed well and integrated seamlessly into content, mid-roll CTAs take advantage of viewers’ existing investment to drive clicks.
Engagement metrics
Engagement is one of the best metrics of viewer interest. High engagement implies that the video was compelling enough to drive viewer interaction. There are multiple types of engagement metrics to consider.
- Likes imply that your video resonated with your audience. They’re also helpful for promoting visibility. Platforms like TikTok and YouTube recommend videos with a high number of likes. On TikTok, your like-to-view ratio is visible to the public, which can boost your credibility with new users.
- Shares show that your video strongly aligns with your audience’s values. Users share videos that allow them to promote their interests and values to their audience. Shares are one of the most effective ways to promote visibility, as they tap into the audience’s existing network while also providing proof of relevance to recommendation algorithms.
- Comments are a mixed bag. While they show users were engaged enough to communicate with the creators, they don’t necessarily reflect positive sentiment. It’s best to use comments as a qualitative metric by individually analyzing what users liked and disliked in your videos. You can increase comments by including interactive content in your videos, such as questions, quizzes, and discussion points.
Monetization metrics
Monetization metrics determine cost-effectiveness. They are not built into most video analytics platforms unless you run paid ads. Examples of pricing models for monetization metrics include:
- Cost per view: The total cost of video production and placement divided by the total number of views.
- Cost per mile: The total cost of video production and placement per thousand impressions.
You can compare revenue against monetization metrics to determine whether you spend on video production appropriately.
Key video analytics tools for brands
Most video-sharing platforms come with data collection tools that help you analyze your audience and their behavior. Below are a few of the most common video analytics tools in the market.
YouTube Studio
YouTube Studio is YouTube’s built-in analytics tool. It is available on your YouTube dashboard and provides comprehensive reports on video and channel performance. It consists of the following tabs:
- Overview: This provides key metrics, such as views, watch time, and subscribers, for the channel, specific video groups, and individual videos. It translates historical data into charts to visualize trends in audience behavior over time. Additionally, it contextualizes the data from the analytics channel by comparing current trends against past performance. For example, it can tell you whether your view count is higher or lower than usual.
- Reach: This tab provides data on your video or channel’s reach. It tracks the number of impressions, CTR (number of clicks against the number of impressions), views, and unique viewers. It also shows you where viewers come across your videos. One of its most valuable tools is the viewership tunnel, which shows how impressions translate to views and watch time.
- Engagement: This tab shows data on how your audience interacts with your video. It includes metrics like watch time, average view duration, likes vs dislikes, and end-screen element interactions.
- Audience: The audience tab shows you who watched your video. It includes metrics like unique viewers, subscribers, average number of views per unique viewer, gender, age, and location. It uses bar graphs to compare the sizes of common audience demographics.
- Revenue: The revenue tab, which is only available to members of the YouTube Partner Program, shows you how much money you’re earning from your videos. It displays estimated revenue, estimated monetized playbacks, and playback-based cost-per-mile (CPM). It also breaks down revenue by month, video, and source.
TikTok Studio
Similar to YouTube Studio, TikTok Studio is TikTok’s native analytics platform. It is available on both browser and mobile. The platform consists of the following tabs:
- Overview: This tab shows basic metrics, such as post views, profile views, likes, comments, shares, and estimated rewards. It also shows you your video’s main traffic sources, including the specific search terms viewers used to find your video.
- Content: The content tab provides more comprehensive profile and video performance data. It shows you your top videos across multiple criteria, including views, likes, new viewers gained, and new followers gained. It also provides more detailed video performance metrics, such as retention rate, viewer information per video, and traffic sources.
- Viewers: The viewers tab provides information about your viewers’ traits, interests, and habits. It uses predictive models to infer your viewers’ genders, ages, and locations. It also shows you when your viewers are active, what creators they follow, and what videos they watch.
- Followers: The followers tab is similar to the viewers tab, except it only provides information about the people following your account. Aside from basic demographic data, it also displays your follower’s video consumption habits, including what videos they consume and when in the day they’re active.
Facebook Insights
Facebook is another popular platform for video marketing. It also comes with a native video analytics app, which provides the following information:
- Views: A straightforward view count for reels, videos, stories, and ads.
- Reach: Measures reach based on sources. It distinguishes organic reach from paid reach and lists all possible traffic sources, including tags, page visits, and profile visits. It also tells you how many viewers you reached by boosting posts.
- Content interactions: This provides engagement metrics, such as likes, reactions, comments, shares, and replies.
- Watch time: This counts the total duration spent watching your videos. It includes replays.
What is the most important metric for video performance?
The most important metric for video marketing performance depends on your specific goals. We break them down below:
- If you aim to increase brand visibility, you should look at your impressions or view count.
- If you want to determine the size of your audience, look at unique viewers.
- If you want to determine if your videos effectively hold the audience’s attention, look at the audience retention or completion rate. The completion rate is a much stricter metric because it requires the viewer to watch the video from start to finish, thereby overlooking the viewers who completed the majority of your video but quit before the end. If you want more flexibility in assessing audience interest, choose the audience retention rate.
- If you want to determine how well your video converts, aim for high clickthrough rates for links in your video or video description.
- If you want to assess cost-effectiveness, look at monetization metrics, such as cost per view or cost per mile.
Elevate your marketing videos with SplitMotion
Without video analytics, optimizing for success is impossible. After publishing your video, analyze your results. Take a deeper look into who watches your video and how they interact with it, then use the evidence to align your content with audience values, interests, and watching habits.
Meeting video marketing goals is easiest with high-quality video production. If you want to create content that engages your audience and drives conversions, outsource the video production process to SplitMotion. Our experts can help you translate your brand vision into a compelling and comprehensive video marketing campaign, producing content that aligns with your values and identity.
