YouTube’s Updated Retention Analytics: Sounds Boring, Actually Useful AF

So, unless you’re a data scientist (s/o to our data science intern Tigran!), the phrase, “retention analytics” prooobably makes your eyes glaze over in sheer boredom. Turns out, understanding retention analytics is CRUCIAL to YouTubers’ long-term success – who’da thought?

YouTube is rolling their new Retention Analytics feature to every creator in their dashboard during the month of October 2020, and we’re here to help you demystify all.that.data.

So, What ARE Retention Analytics?

Retention analytics monitor watch time to see how long viewers are watching your videos. Do they skip to another video after 10 seconds? Do they watch the entire video, then go to the next in your channel? Do they re-watch specific sections?

Retention rate is an important part of your overall engagement rate, which also factors in comments, likes, shares, and views. The higher the retention rate, the longer your viewers are tuned in. The longer they’re tuned in, the more likely you are to get them to buy the products you’re recommending in the MagicLinks in your video description.

Now that you know what retention analytics are, you need to drill down to the four key moments of viewer retention.

Okay, I’m In. What’re the Four Key Moments of Viewer Retention?

1. Intro: How many viewers are still watching after the first 30 seconds? Especially with the popularity of micro-video platforms like TikTok and Instagram Reels, keeping fans engaged for longer than 30 minutes is getting increasingly difficult.
2. Continuous Segments: A period of time where the view count graph for a video stays, essentially, the same. It means that viewers are staying, they’re still watching, and MOST importantly, not clicking out.
3. Spikes: Sections of a video with a higher watch rate – maybe a particularly funny moment, maybe the final yea or nay section of a product review, maybe even people are sharing the video timestamped to a specific portion of the video. Check those portions of your video, to see what’s going on – good or bad?
4. Dips: This is where you’re losing viewers. Not good. ‘Nuff said.

Image courtesy of Vidooly

What Can You Do With This Info?

A lot! Just as with your MagicLinks Performance Reports (not a MagicLinks member? Click here to apply now!), which give you data on how many clicks you got, which products your fans bought through your links, and more, your Retention Analytics tell you what your audience loves.

Data Matters: Look how much you could be earning with MagicLinks!

This, in turn, helps you narrow your content focus to take advantage of your audience’s likes & dislikes. Which, as you’ve probably figured out, could help you get more subscribers, views, comments, likes, sales, brand campaigns… You name it!

Want to learn more about growing your YouTube channel? Let us know in the comments!