How to Find out Who Is Watching Your YouTube Videos

Wouldn't it be helpful to know who is watching your uploaded YouTube videos? Well, you can. You can't find out specific names, but you can get a lot of very helpful demographic information beyond just the view counts.

YouTube has built-in analytics (previously called "Insight") that lets you find out aggregate information about your viewers. This is pretty similar to what you would find with Google Analytics.

 
To use analytics for all the videos in a channel, log into your YouTube channel and go to the Creator Studio. Click on Analytics in the menu to the left.

You can also find analytics information for individual videos you created by going to the video's watch page and clicking on the analytics button below the video. 

YouTube analytics provides you with a lot of different types of information including:

Views

This shows approximately how many people view your video. It's broken down by day and country.

Watch Time and average view duration

These charts help you figure out how long someone is viewing your videos. Are they just clicking on a link and then leaving because they realize they made a mistake or are they watching the whole thing? Use what you know about their viewing habits to make more videos people watch for longer. 

Traffic Sources

This tells you how other people find your video. Do they wander in from related videos or are they finding it in search?

You can also see separate charts on sharing, liking, commenting, and other audience participation. 

Devices

You can see what operating system and type of device people are using to view your videos. Are they mostly using mobile or desktop computers? Has this changed over time?

Demographics

You can find estimates of the age range, gender, and geographic location of viewers.

 

Audience Retention

This used to be part of what was called a "hot spot" report. You can see a graph that plays alongside your video of who watches the video and when viewers stop watching. You may also see some peaks as if viewers start watching midstream. In some cases ,they may have viewed an embedded video with a different start time and in others, they may be rewinding to view that portion of the video again. Either way, it's an indication that this is an interesting part of your video. 

Revenue reports

If you're showing ads on your videos, you can see a variety of reports to help you understand how much you're earning and which videos are making you money. 

When you explore analytics, keep in mind that you can interact with almost everything and drill down for more information. Want to know how popular your video is in Canada? Click Canada on the map, and all the information will be specific to Canada. Want to find out exactly where you're losing viewers? Scrub to that point in the Audience Retention report to view the specific moment on your video. 

Keep in mind that all this data is an approximation. Google uses a lot of educated guesses when it determines demographics.