YouTube Question Still don't understand how Impression and CTR works

[tropicthunder]

I know for certain that to increase impression, your CTR must be increase. I've read it on youtube and from this forum and somewhere else on the internet. But in my case, this is from my other channel, the impression is decreasing gradually, while the CTR is increasing. I don't know what I'm missing here

As you can see on the screenshot above, the CTR increasing, but the impression keep decreasing. Does the impression are going to catch up with the CTR or something else ?

 

[SILTHW]

Impressions is the number of times that people are offered your video - whether from search, recommended, etc. CTR is the percentage of people shown that video that actually clicked on the video.

So 1000 impressions with a 10% CTR means 100 people clicked on your video. You are trying to increase CTR because you want to get the most value out of the impressions you get.

If you want to improve your impressions number, you need to focus on improving Search and Discovery. If you are seeing a decline, that could indicate that you are not getting as much of a boost from Search and Discovery and need to look at your SEO. If you are seeing an increase in CTR, then more people are liking your thumbnail and are clicking it. That's a good thing.

There are levers associated with each major metric:
- Impressions are driven by Search and Discovery and thus related to SEO
- Click through rate (CTR) is driven by the "attractiveness" of your thumbnails. Improving your thumbnails has a direct, positive impact on CTR
- Average view duration (AVD) is driven by the quality of your content. If your AVD is low you need to focus on improving your content quality

Similarly, there are bad practices that can directly harm the major metrics:
- Misleading SEO can hurt search and discovery
- Purchased "views" might increase your CTR, but kill your AVD
- Purchased subs can kill your Search and Discovery because those subscribers don't watch your new content.

 

[tropicthunder]

If you want to improve your impressions number, you need to focus on improving Search and Discovery. If you are seeing a decline, that could indicate that you are not getting as much of a boost from Search and Discovery and need to look at your SEO. If you are seeing an increase in CTR, then more people are liking your thumbnail and are clicking it. That's a good thing.

Thank you SILTH. I think I'm starting to understand about what happening with this.

One of my old video on that channel that got me those numbers were getting boost by youtube, back then, about 6 months ago, that video topic doesn't have much competition from a bigger channel. Now, when I look at "Other videos your audience watched", there are a lot of videos with the same topic as mine from a bigger channel.

If I remember correctly, a smaller channel will have less chance in search and discovery if a bigger channel have the same video topic.

 

[Stanley | Team TB]

You also have to take into consideration that YouTube has us all broke up and categorized into our viewing habits. And they are sharing you our to various audiences... and they don't always get it right. Or sometimes they do, I don't know. The bottom line is that those impressions are the reflection of YouTube sharing our your video to various audiences. While CTR is an important metric to reflect how well audiences are responding don't forget that watch time is the key feature here. If your video is getting less watch time with these new audiences or your competition has put out a video that is receiving more watch time than yours those impressions are going to be doled out elsewhere.

 

[Beanie Draws]

Your stats are looking good, I'd say at this point, you can also look at individual traffic source impressions to see how your impressions are comparing across things like search, suggested, external etc. But the more impressions you get, you'll naturally get less CTR, but I'd love to have a ctr of 12%

You're also looking a the a channel level from the looks of it, which probably won't tell you a huge amount overall. I'd be looking at your impressions on an individal video basis as that's more likely to tell you how each individual video performed from a search, ranking, and overal clickthrough impression perspective, which can also indicate if the topic/thumbnail was a winner.

At face value though, it looks like you're doing well.

 

[tropicthunder]

or your competition has put out a video that is receiving more watch time than yours those impressions are going to be doled out elsewhere.

My best guess is this, from the number of views, I got way behind their videos

You're also looking a the a channel level from the looks of it, which probably won't tell you a huge amount overall. I'd be looking at your impressions on an individal video basis as that's more likely to tell you how each individual video performed from a search, ranking, and overal clickthrough impression perspective, which can also indicate if the topic/thumbnail was a winner.

Just saw it on the "see more" analytic, I guess I really need to re-work some of the thumbnails. Even there are ctr with 0,1% lol.

 

[Beanie Draws]

Just saw it on the "see more" analytic, I guess I really need to re-work some of the thumbnails. Even there are ctr with 0,1% lol.

Eesh! Yep, with a 0.1% ctr you definitely want to amp up your thumbs and try some new approaches. For me, it's always the audience retention that makes me know I need to re-work things.

But it's good that you're exploring your analytics more They will tell you above most, where your issues lay and where you have areas to improve (the click magnet tool of TubeBuddy (legend license) also uses a lot of that data, and interprets it in a way that's a lot easier to understand, and with a single click