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Strategy

New YouTube Analytics Tool Could Help Marketers

The social media platform has also debuted a new feature to encourage purchases of branded merchandise during livestreams.

YouTube is launching a new analytics feature that will help marketers and other creators who make videos for the platform to develop a deeper understanding of how their channels are performing.

The announcement comes as YouTube also debuted a fresh feature aimed at driving sales of branded merchandise during livestreams, and shortly after the social media giant revealed that creators can now segment their videos into clickable chapters.

Youtube

In Creator Studio, YouTube is establishing a new integrated channel performance chart. Within a single display, it will show views, subscriber count, watch time and revenue performance. The upshot is that the tool, which provides summary indicators on each tab to highlight trends, makes it simpler to obtain a speedy overview of how a channel is performing.

“A new report in YouTube studio merges two existing monthly insights about subscriber performance and revenue performance, and then adds a new analysis for views,” YouTube Creator Insider Tom Leung says in explaining the feature. “It includes a new visualization, with a monthly bar chart showing 13 months, so that you can quickly gauge monthly performance and identify potential seasonal trends.”

Meanwhile, YouTube is also debuting a “Live Alerts for Merch” offering. It spotlights purchases of a creator’s swag made during a livestream in the stream’s comments thread. The call out includes a link for other stream viewers to click through and see the product. YouTube believes the highlight with link to the item will help drive merch sales.

The caveat is that only purchases made via creators’ YouTube-integrated Teespring stores are displayed. YouTube began allowing creators to sell their promotional products directly to fans through a partnership with e-commerce swag site Teespring in 2018.

YouTube notes that livestream views have increased during the COVID-19 pandemic, as many have been homebound and viewing more online video.