How to See Who Is Watching Your YouTube Videos

This article explains how you can get helpful YouTube demographic information beyond the view counts for your videos. The built-in analytics provide aggregate information about your viewers, similar to Google Analytics.

How to Find YouTube Analytics for Your Channel

YouTube Studio is part of every YouTube channel and it's where you go to see your analytics. Here's how to get there:

1. From a computer, log in to your YouTube account and select your profile image at the top right.

2. Select YouTube Studio.

3. In the left panel, select Analytics to expand a list of tabs for different types of statistics related to your video viewers.

How to View Data in YouTube Analytics

Information about your audience can be viewed through several analytic filters, including:

• Watch time
• Average view duration
• Impressions
• Shown in feed
• New viewers
• Likes and dislikes
• Shares
• Traffic source
• Age and gender
• Device type

Depending on the type of data you're reviewing, you can generate line charts to see how that data has changed over time. You can also view multi-line charts and compare the performance of several videos.

Overview Report

The first report tab listed in YouTube Analytics is Overview. It's a high-level summary of how your content is doing. The report includes performance metrics summarizing views, watch time, and subscribers.

The Overview report also provides the view count of all your videos in the last 48 hours, plus a real-time look at subscribers. This is the place to be to watch your subscriber numbers go up!

Content

Under the Content tab, you'll find your channel's impressions, views, and more. You can also see your channel's traffic sources (search, external links, suggested videos, etc.), how many impressions led to watch time, and a list of all your top videos over a specific period.

Audience

The Audience tab breaks down the demographics of your viewers. It shows their age, gender, and geography. This area also differentiates the watch time between subscribers and non-subscribers, and you can see which subtitle languages are being used.

Research

The Research tab in YouTube Analytics displays the top searches people are entering to reach your videos. This might match the overall theme of your channel if you post similar videos and, if it doesn't, it could give you some pointers about what sort of content your visitors think you have or where you can narrow your focus.

Advanced Mode

You can select Advanced Mode at the top of any of those three tabs to see extremely detailed stats about your YouTube channel.

When you click through the tabs on this page, you can see a huge variety of information. This includes where your subscribers came from (your channel, a search, etc.), how many views your videos received on a specific day, the cities your watchers are from, the percentage of total views you're receiving from each age group, where your viewers are sharing your videos (e.g., WhatsApp, text, Facebook Messenger, embed), and lots more.