If you’ve been following our blogs and videos about 

, you may have noticed they have some distinct benefits and limitations. For weeks now, we’ve marveled at the extra views any creator can get from simply posting a YouTube Short. And at the same time, we’ve bemoaned the lack of analytics for this feature because that’s what helps creators excel on YouTube.

Now that YouTube is going all-in with short-form content, more information is being shared with creators. Now, you can go to the YouTube Studio and access the one thing we’ve wanted to see all along, which are analytics for YouTube Shorts. 

We were so excited to see this, we filmed a brief tutorial on how to get there in the YouTube Studio:

Without these analytics, we can't answer important questions. 

For instance, Shorts are vertical videos of less than 60 seconds, and we’ve always wondered how such a short viewing duration affects a channel’s 

, and if so, what that process looks like. These questions had no conclusive answers for a long time, but now we have some information to share.

To learn everything we know, such as where to access YouTube Shorts analytics, and how monetization works for the new content type, read our guide below.

On YouTube, there are three ways to view Shorts analytics. Two of those methods are for desktop viewing and one is for viewing on mobile. To see analytics on either device, here’s what you need to do.

Method 1: Viewing Individual Video Stats on Desktop

While on desktop, go to the YouTube Studio.

Hover your mouse over any video, and some menu options will appear. You’ll want to click the analytics button, which looks like a tiny bar graph.

On the right side of the page, you’ll find real-time stats for views coming from YouTube Shorts, as shown below:

Method 2: Viewing Channel Stats on Desktop 

Next, you’ll see a section showing views, Watch Time, subscriber count, and estimated revenue for your channel. Scroll directly below this section and click ‘

Go to the filter tabs at the top of the page and click ‘

’. This action divides the views on your channel by all the different ways people can watch your content, which now includes YouTube Shorts. Take a look below:

Open the YouTube Studio app and click ‘

’ tab at the top of the page and you’ll see a list of traffic sources for your views, including those from YouTube Shorts.

YouTube Shorts Views: Can They Be Monetized?

Now that creators can access YouTube Shorts analytics, where these views are coming from is no longer a secret. But having more information leads to more questions, such as, “Is it possible to monetize YouTube Shorts?”

Basically, views that come from the YouTube Shorts traffic source aren’t monetized.

Because of that, these views don't contribute to the 4,000 hours of Watch Time you’d need to 

However, if someone watches a YouTube Short as a regular video on the app - meaning it wasn’t watched on the 

 or another display area - that video can earn some revenue and boost a channel's Watch Time.

For example, let's say you’re watching a video but something interests you on the Stories and Short Videos shelf. If you watch that video, the creator earns one view from the traffic source of ‘YouTube Shorts’. They don't earn any advertising revenue or extra Watch Time.

On the other hand, if you watch that same video on a channel page so it plays like a regular video, the Short earns one view and can 

 get advertising revenue. And any Watch Time it collects goes toward the 4,000 hours a creator needs for monetization.

YouTube Shorts, their analytics, and how everything gets monetized is kind of confusing right now. If you have a channel dedicated to YouTube Shorts, things get even muddier.

 channel to upload and test the performance of our own YouTube Shorts. We're up to 977 subscribers, and each video is vertical and less than 60 seconds long. Although many views on this channel come from the YouTube Shorts traffic source, more than half come from other traffic sources. And as we mentioned before, views from the YouTube Shorts traffic source aren’t monetized.

That means views from the traffic sources below, and the Watch Time they earn, count toward monetizing the vidIQ Shorts channel:

But here’s the weird part. When you look at the total Watch Time for our Shorts channel (158.5) versus the Watch Time hours that have been recorded for monetization (71), something is obviously wonky. Theoretically, if more views are coming from non-YouTube Shorts traffic sources, we should have than 71 hours of Watch Time recorded for monetization.

Two Metrics Are Still Missing From YouTube Shorts Analytics

Speaking of metrics, we’d like to see more of them for YouTube Shorts, especially on desktop. We still have no idea how often YouTube shares our content on discovery shelves, so we need a metric showing that. It would also help to see how often people tap on a Short. Right now, we don’t know if people are going to our channel after watching a Short or skipping the video altogether.

Basically, we’d like to see impressions and click-through rates. That would help us determine which Shorts contain the blueprint for getting more views, at the very least. 

To compete with TikTok, YouTube will probably keep developing Shorts and all the data that come with them. We just hope future metrics help creators do what they desire 

which is getting more views, subscribers, Watch Time, and revenue on YouTube.

If you want to take your YouTube channel to the next level and 

 then make sure to download vidIQ for more subscriber insights. Join over 1 million other users and use vidIQ to help you research YouTube, analyze videos, audit your own channel, and take actionable steps to success. 

And if you’re really serious about growing your channel, sign up for exclusive access to the 

 and learn how to launch a successful YouTube Channel in just 30 days.

Want to know what percentage of your YouTube traffic comes from YouTube Shorts? Wonder no more. Here's a guide on how to find the analytics you're looking for.

YouTube Shorts Analytics: Why Every Creator Needs This Data

We are always talking about how you can get more views on your YouTube channel if you have a better understanding of your 

. But access to that data hasn’t been possible to do away from a desktop - until now.

Understanding YouTube Analytics - Mobile Version!

The first thing you will need to do is to make sure your iOS or Android version of the Creator Studio app is fully up-to-date. To do this, go to either the Android Play Store or Apple App Store, search for ‘YouTube Studio’, and if it isn't up-to-date right now, you should get an option to update it from this screen.

Now open up the Creator Studio app from the Dashboard screen

Tap on ‘View More’ for channel analytics

Then tap on the ‘Discovery’ tab to show you the screen Impressions and click-through rate for your entire channel over the last 28 days.

Even the full desktop Creator Studio doesn't show you this side-by-side comparison, which can be useful to review as a snapshot of how impressions affect your click-through rate.

You can tap on each of the graphs to go into detail and the impressions will show you growth or decline over the last 28 days.

The dropdown filter allows you to refine your results to the last seven days but unfortunately not to the last 48 hours or 60 minutes so it isn't quite realtime, an advantage you do get through the desktop version.

As well as channel impressions and click-through rates, you can view the same analytics on a video-by-video basis.

Go to the ‘Video’ section of the Creator Studio app and select the video you want to view

You'll see the same Discovery tab at the top of the screen which will show you impressions and click-through rates for that one video.

Now for a quick explanation of these two analytics:

 are the number of times your thumbnail is seen on YouTube. You want as many impressions as possible because that's basically free advertising for your content.

 is the number of times a person clicks on a thumbnail when it's seen. For example, if you get a hundred impressions and 10 people click on those thumbnails, that is a click-through rate of 10% and that would be considered very high and very good.

The quality of your thumbnails is what usually drives your click-through rate, so from our tutorials on how to make better thumbnails, we've got a playlist over here.

A lot of people have been getting very excited about these analytics finally coming to the mobile app, and you may be wondering why it's taken so long for that to happen when they've been available on desktop for over a year.

Well, to be honest, it's our fault. Well, I don't mean vidIQ's fault but the creator community at large. YouTube is currently having to maintain both the new Creator Studio and the Classic Creator Studio and until they can pull resources off of that Classic Studio, they can't put them into resources that will help them create all of these analytics for the mobile application.

So the quicker we can all get off Classic, which is happening very, very soon, the quicker YouTube can create more awesome tools for us on the desktop and mobile analytics for YouTube.

 then make sure to download vidIQ. Join over 1 million other users and use vidIQ to help you research YouTube, analyze videos, audit your own channel, and take actionable steps 

And if you’re really serious about growing your YouTube views and subscribers, sign up for exclusive access to the 

YouTube has finally made some vital analytics data available on its mobile app. We show you how to find these insights and how understanding them will help your channel grow.

How to Get More YouTube Views by Understanding These New CRUCIAL Analytics

Many YouTubers have had that one successful video that has outperformed all others, and a deep-dive into your analytics can uncover the secrets to your most-viewed content. In this episode of TubeTalk, the YouTuber podcast, we show you what metrics to look out for, what you should be focusing on, and how you can replicate success across your channel.

, and he’s all about helping businesses get more value from their video marketing efforts. Dane is the founder of the TubeTalk podcast, and he's also been a vidIQ user since Day 1. He’s also a proud 

! Click on the link above or download the TubeTalk podcast from the following:

If you have followed all the best practices for creating a great video, like giving it a great title and a compelling thumbnail, it should perform as well as any other you have uploaded. But we all know that’s not the case - some videos underperform and it pays to understand exactly why. In this podcast we take a look at:

Optimizing Thumbnails for a good click through rate

Using the right language to end your video

Leveraging traffic sources for views & content ideas

Why buying YouTube views is a really, really terrible idea

Understanding Audience Retention for YouTube Success

Just one of the topics covered in this TubeTalk podcast is Audience Retention. Dane confirms that a good way to look at the audience retention metric is to ask “how fast do people want to leave this video?" because in many videos it's very fast! He divides audience retention into three parts:

 How well does your intro and hook correspond with what you're doing in the thumbnail and title? If there is a disconnect between what you’ve promised and what you actually deliver your audience retention can drop very fast. For instance, if your thumbnail and title promises a video about ice cream but you actually focus on pizza your audience is not going to stick around (or come back).

 This really is the bulk of the video where you should be engaging your viewers after the initial premise, keeping them interested and continuing to add value.

 Did you convince your viewers to stay to the very end? Getting them to click on your end screen can really improve not just the ranking of that video, but the channel overall. You want to keep them watching as long as possible, and convince them to convince them to click and watch another video. If you can get them to watch to the end and get them to watch your next video, that's a very powerful signal for 

Looking at each of these sections independently can really help you understand how your content appeals to your audience. A lot of creators focused on the intro and the hook, but should take into consideration all three parts.

If you're a marketer and want to out more about how to promote your business on YouTube using high value, low cost, helpful how-to videos, you can watch Dane and HEY.com 

. Also he interviews the top video marketing experts on the "

Subscribe to TubeTalk: The Video Marketing Podcast!

TubeTalk has been informing video creators amd marketers since 2014, and is one of the most respected and listened to podcasts in the online video industry. Subscribe today so you never miss an episode! You can find vidIQ's TubeTalk at:

Want To Get More YouTube Views & Subscribers?

Want to better understanding YOUR YouTube analytics? Make sure to download vidIQ today. It will help you research YouTube, understand what's working and what isn't, analyze videos, audit your own channel, and take actionable steps 

Understanding your YouTube analytics is the first to step to creating content that drives views and subscriber growth. In this episode of TubeTalk we discuss Audience Retention, how to end your video, and why buying views is a really, really terrible idea.

Recreating YouTube Success by Understanding Analytics: TubeTalk Episode 158

Pay attention because this tip is super important. Why? Because YouTube wants you to get as much Watch Time as possible in every single video that you make. For those who've never heard this term before, Watch Time is generally considered the most important metric on YouTube. Basically it is the physical number of minutes and hours your content is watched for by people on YouTube. But why is Watch Time more important than views?

Watch Time: Good for YouTube, Good for Video Creators

Let's take a look at it from this perspective. Views represent clicks, or visits, but they don't tell you for how long somebody is on the YouTube platform or on the mobile app. The more Watch Time YouTube has from its audience, the more ads they can sell to the audience, making more money for YouTube, and more money for the video creator. So it stands to reason that the more Watch Time you can create from your videos, the more YouTube is going to reward you, and share your content with more people. Win win win.

But also bear in mind that you don't have to monetize your content to benefit from this. The search and discovery engine is separate from the monetization engine. Let's do a simple example here. You've got a video with 1,000 views, with an average view duration of one minute. That gives you 1,000 minutes of Watch Time in total. But you've also got a video with 500 views, with five minutes of Watch Time, which gives you a total of 2,500 minutes of Watch Time. Which do you think has the better chance of doing well on YouTube in the long run? Yeah, it's probably video B.

YouTube have stated that when it comes to Watch Time, audience retention is hugely important, but there are a lot of ways to get more Watch Time, and that's what we're gonna explore right now.

Using YouTube Analytics to Confirm Watch Time Stats

Let's look at the numbers first. If you haven't already seen our 

, I recommend you watch that video at some point to help with navigating around these screens more confidently.

With that being said, on the Creator Studio dashboard, click on ‘Analytics’, and then at the top of the graphs, click on the ‘Interest Viewers’ tab. You should now see an average view duration box and if you click on this, it will show you a graph of on average how long your videos are watched for. This is useful from a channel perspective, and as we've already said, more is better.

But this graph doesn't take into account how long each individual video is. So to improve Watch Time, you really want to start by scrutinizing every single second of a single video. To do this, click on the ‘Videos’ link to the left, which lists all of your videos. Then choose a video you want to analyze. Click now on the analytics section, and on the first screen here, you should see this audience retention box.

Now, you can make a video an hour long if you want to, but if nobody's watching it after a single minute, that's going to send some pretty negative signals to YouTube. Audience retention is all about keeping that viewer interested throughout the entirety of your video. Keeping them informed, interested, intrigued, and entertained. And you want to try and get that audience retention to as close to 100% as possible. Generally speaking, that's very difficult to do. So a general benchmark is somewhere around about 50%. And this box will tell you all that, the total length of the video, and the average view duration converted into a percentage.

To really drill down into this data, you can click on the ‘See More’ button, and then watch the video to see where there are peaks and dips in your content. There's always loads of useful stuff you can glean from audience retention graphs, like why Audience increase or decreased at a certain point in the video.

Let's talk about how important video intros are. You are always going to have a sharp drop off in viewership as soon as the video starts. For some viewers, the content is just not going to click, and they will turn off instantly. And then there's gonna be another group of viewers who may stick around more maybe 15 or 30 seconds to try and determine whether this video delivers in some way from the thumbnail and the title. That's why there needs to be some sort of hook or payoff. A way to entice a viewer to invest a few more minutes into the video, and hopefully keep them engaged for the entirety of the video. You can look back at pretty much any video on vidIQ, and you'll see me trying to entertain, inform, or intrigue you in those first 15 seconds before you see the vidIQ splash screen. That is my attempt to get you to watch longer, and I think it works, generally speaking.

On educational videos, creators will give you the final result at the beginning of the video, and then the rest of the video is about how to get there. For compilations or stories, there may be an epic part of the video that's used at the very beginning intro, and you don't actually see that part until maybe four or five minutes into the actual video. It's kind of like teasing a story before you watch the beginning of it. So if you've not tried this before, experiment with a dedicated intro to your video, and try to keep it to 15 seconds or less. Oh, and your branded intro or bumper should be no longer than five seconds.

How to Keep the YouTube Viewer’s Attention with Pattern Interrupts

Because as you well know, the average audience attention span of a YouTube viewer can be pretty short. So how do you fix that? You do something called pattern interrupt. A pattern interrupt is a change of pace, tone, and style - think of pattern interrupts as attention reset buttons. You still know what the videos about, but there's something new to look at on the screen

I try to have a pattern interrupt at least once every ten seconds, but other video creators do pattern interrupts every two or three seconds. Now, there is one huge drawback to the video creator when you use pattern interrupts, and that's editing. It adds hours to the process. So try not to go overboard, and start to watch video creators who operate in your space on YouTube with a critical eye to see if they adopt pattern interrupt strategies, and how often they do it. You should start to notice that the best video creators in your space adopt a certain style and tone through pattern interrupts that you should be at least aware of if you're not trying to follow in some way. Also, consider using B-roll in your video to keep the YouTube viewer watching and entertained. And if you’re going to try and cover many topics in a single video, at least tell the viewer in the title or the video intro, or do another dedicated video on that topic. Stay focused, edit ruthlessly.

Don’t Create Long Videos for the Sake of it

The most important currency on YouTube is time. You want as much Watch Time as possible, but your viewer wants to spend their time on YouTube as efficiently as possible. Just because YouTube states that Watch Time is one of its most important ranking factors, doesn't mean you should make longer videos to get more Watch Time. You're pandering too much to an algorithm, and doing a disservice to your audience.

If you want to take your YouTube channel to the next level then make sure to download vidIQ. It will help you research YouTube, analyze videos, audit your own channel, and take actionable steps 

Watch Time is one of YouTube's most important ranking metrics - but what is it and how do you increase Watch Time on your own YouTube videos and Channel?

YouTube Watch Time: The Secret Sauce to More YouTube Views and Subscribers

All YouTube Analytics starts with impressions showing your thumbnails and titles. Make sure your impressions to views are always improving with great thumbnails.

You can find the impressions to views click through rate numbers by going to the new studio beta, clicking on the video, click analytics, then click reach users.

You want to aim for YouTube promoting your content for free by getting lots of watch time.

Watch the video above for all the details and 

don't forget to install vidIQ for free now!

Want to grow your channel faster? It's all about impressions to views and watch time.

How to Grow Your Channel Fast By Understanding Analytics!

Curious which analytics you should be focusing on in the coming months to help grow your channel? Look no further — here are the top 5 analytics to get you more views and subscribers on YouTube in 2019.

Note: In order to follow along you’ll need to access the new YouTube Studio beta. If you’re still on Creator Studio Classic, you'll see a big blue “YOUTUBE STUDIO BETA” link in the top-left-hand corner. Click there and you'll instantly see a radically different analytics page.

The first analytic we want to look at is click-through rate. Put simply, your click-through rate is the number of times somebody clicks on one of your thumbnails or titles from the total number of times it's been seen.

So if three people see your video and one of them chooses to watch it, that’s a click-through rate essentially of 33.3%.

In the YouTube Studio beta, you can see the impressions and click-through rates for the past 28 days by simply navigating to “Analytics” from the dashboard and then clicking on “Reviewers.”

You can also go to different cards in the YouTube analytics and look at a breakdown of click-through rates. So if I click on Top Videos, for example, it will list the click-through rate for individual videos as well.

Now if you’re wondering why you should care about your click-through rate, here are three key reasons:

Every single analytic from your YouTube channel trickles down from click-through rate. People have to actually click on your thumbnail to watch your content before you can gain traction with other analytics such as watchtime, subscribers, comments, and all the rest of that good stuff.

Viewers judge videos by their thumbnails just as readers judge books by their covers, so it's really important to have a good first impression. Your click-through rate represents intrigue — of topic, thumbnail or title. For example, recently we covered the subscriber rate of PewDiePie vs. T-Series. Because it was a very intriguing topic at the time, and we used very targeted keywords and colorful thumbnails, our click-through rate for that particular topic went through the roof.

An important to remember about click-through rate is it’s not an exact science. I often hear people say between 2% and 10% is a “good” click-through rate, but I think it’s better to focus simply on improving your click-through rate.

Click-through rates vary from video topic to video topic, and it's heavily influenced by where you are simply in the order of suggested videos and search pages. If you're at the top of a search page, you can have a terrible thumbnail but a high click-through rate simply because of the prime real estate.

Don't get too caught up comparing your click-through rate versus somebody else's. Look at your click-through rate, and aim to improve it one or two percentage points over 2019 — that will bring in a significant number of views.

Channel analytics can give you some insight into average view duration, but a more accurate approach is look at audience retention on individual videos.

To do this, click “Videos” along the left-hand nav. Click on the video that you want to investigate and you’ll see audience retention.

Mouse over the graph and you'll see the audience retention at a specific point in the video, or click on a point and then press play. Doing so will allow you to see the audience retention alongside the video in real-time, giving you clues to investigate drops and spikes in retention.

And if you’re thinking that watchtime is the ultimate analytic king on YouTube and not audience retention, consider that YouTube tends to favor content with more than 50% audience retention. So whether your videos are two minutes long, four minutes long or six minutes long, aim first to make your content better to improve audience retention, and then start to think about making longer videos if that's what you want to do with your content to get more watchtime.

Each individual video has likes and dislikes, and 

 has a funky little tool that turns these metrics into a Likes to Dislikes Ratio.

But what if you want this for your entire channel?

Well they do in the form of YouTube recommended content. When viewers watch your content and enjoy it, they generally watch for longer, and YouTube loves this.

When YouTube loves your content, they want to share it with more people. That means putting it on the homepage, Browse Features and the suggested videos on watch pages — and the more you can push this line into the orange, the more YouTube is doing all the hard work for you.

Rather than people having to search to find your content or find it through the subscription feeds, they're finding it in random places because YouTube wants to share your content with a wider audience.

So how do you manipulate this magic formula to get it to work for you? Engaging thumbnails, intriguing titles — which are then clicked onto — increased watchtime on your content and, as we mentioned, getting above 50% with your audience retention.

For example, take a look at vidIQ’s September analytics below. Notice the 2.5 million impressions, 27.8% of which came from YouTube recommending our content.

Now take a look at vidIQ’s analytics for October when the T-Series vs. PewDiePie subscriber rates was in full flow.

Look at the radical change here: 17 million impressions, and YouTube was recommending our content way more, especially on homepages.

We were feeding YouTube exactly what they wanted and so they responded by sharing it with a much wider audience.

I may be missing something here in the new analytics dashboard, but I can't find a good way to show subscribers gained from videos, so we're going old school here.

Navigate to Creator Studio Classic, click on “Subscribers” and then “YouTube watch page”. This will show you all the videos that are converting viewers into subscribers.

Since there is no analytic that tracks trust, tracking subscribers gained is the next best thing. Think about it, why else would someone subscribe to your channel unless they trust you — trust you to entertain, educate or emotionally impact you.

People who subscribe to your channel from a video watch page usually do it because they’ve experienced a light bulb moment — something that instinctively and instantly drives them to click that button.

 you can look at subs gained a lot quicker than through YouTube analytics through the subs gained column on our channel audit.

If you click on “View More”, you can see all of the videos that are driving viewers to turn into subscribers. It's almost like your trust column.

We also have click-through rate, audience retention, YouTube recommended content, and subscribers gained.

We said earlier that gaining subscribers through your videos is like building trust with your audience. Gaining comments, likes and dislikes through your videos is building engagement — another really important facet of YouTube.

Strictly speaking, YouTube doesn't track engagement rate, but the vidIQ channel audit tool does. Use it to see which videos are generating conversation or whether they're polarizing in terms of how many people react to it with likes versus dislikes.

Astonishingly here, we have one video with 68% engagement rate, but that's because we were having a little bit of fun with YouTube premieres.

In terms of engagement rates, we also want to look at the finer points as well. If we scroll down the channel audit page, we can look at how often the end screens are clicked on — you know, those boxes right at the end of videos.

As a final thought on engagement, don’t forget the Community tab if you have access to it.

Use it to ask your audience what video you should make next, collect general feedback or start a conversation. You might be surprised by the response. In fact, we’ve found that some of our posts are getting more feedback from the videos themselves.

All of these analytics are super important, but if you don’t actually do something with them then you’re missing the point. Remember: Doing the same thing over and expecting different results is a sign of insanity.

Our challenge to you is simple: Act on the data you’re getting from YouTube and 

 and good luck in growing your channel in 2019!

Video creators have access to A TON of analytics, but which ones should you prioritize to get more views and subscribers? Dive into the top 5 vidIQ-approved analytics and grow your YouTube channel fast.

How to Get More Views and Subscribers with YouTube Analytics

1 Studio Beta Individual video impressions and CTR

In the new YouTube Studio Beta click on Analytics then click on top videos.

A list will pull up where you can sort by highest CTR

Click on reach viewers and you will see unique viewers on the right.

This allows you to understand how many views you get per viewer. You can see this metric under build an audience.

This metric shows how your latest has done compared to other content.

With compare metrics you can compare lots of metrics together to get a visual feel for how you are doing.

Do you need to know your YouTube analytics to grow your channel right? Well here's 10 you might be missing and where to find them!

YouTube Analytics