YouTube Analytics: Tips and best practices

YouTube Analytics: Tips and best practices#

Understanding data types, report types and reports#

You can retrieve different data from a YouTube Analytics datastream depending on how you configure three settings: Data type, Report type, and Report. Configure these settings in the Settings tab of your YouTube Analytics datastream overview.

Data type#

Select one of the following options:

  • Channel Report: Collect data for channels connected to your account (channels you have Administrator permission for)

  • Content Owner: Collect data for channels created by other content owners that you have Ad Manager permission for. Enter the Content owner ID in the field that appears

Report type#

Bulk report type: - Obtain data for more combinations of dimensions and metrics - Data typically delayed by 48-72 hours to ensure quality - Daily reports: retrieve data for the last 60 days - Historical data reports: retrieve data for the last 30 days only - Data older than these periods is not available through the API

Video Reports: - Retrieve data for individual videos - Supports various breakdowns including demographics and geography

Playlist Reports: - Retrieve data for specific playlists - Provides statistics related to video views within playlist context

Content owner ID#

For Content Owner data type, enter the ID of the content owner whose channel data you want to collect. You need Ad Manager permission for the channel.

To find the content owner ID: 1. Go to https://www.youtube.com/analytics 2. Switch to the desired account 3. The content owner ID appears in the URL between https://www.youtube.com/analytics?o= and &ar

Available granularity levels#

  • Channel level: High-level metrics such as subscribers_count, video_count

  • Video level: Individual video performance metrics

Further breakdowns include age, gender, country, and provinces, each requiring its own report under Video Reports.

Understanding channel vs video reporting#

Channel Reports return high-level metrics on channel level such as subscribers_count and video_count. For metrics like impressions, likes, and dislikes on channel level, use Video Reports and exclude the video dimension. Channel level metrics retain their ‘channel_’ prefix.

subscribers_count are returned as lifetime values in each fetch—do not aggregate them. Historical data is not available for channel-level data.

While you cannot influence fields returned by bulk reports, you can define filters under Settings to fetch only relevant data.

Data limitations and considerations#

  • Data latency: Up to 48 hours delay; use schedule offsets or adjust fetch frequency accordingly

  • Historical data: Not available on channel level; video level data dates back to upload date

  • Subscriber counts: Rounded down to three significant figures for counts greater than 1,000 subscribers

Troubleshooting common issues#

Missing Video IDs#

Some video IDs may occasionally be missing from fetched data. This is a known YouTube API issue affecting all users. Missing video IDs may appear in subsequent fetches while other IDs become missing. This must be fixed by YouTube.

Subscriber count discrepancies#

YouTube changed subscriber count reporting. For channels with more than 1,000 subscribers, counts are rounded down to three significant figures. For example, 123,456 subscribers reports as 123,000.

Negative values for likes and dislikes#

Negative values such as -1 for likes or dislikes indicate users removed their previous engagement (un-liked or un-disliked).

Partnership Program status errors#

Error “We could not retrieve the selected metrics. Please verify your Youtube Partnership Program status [Forbidden]” means YouTube restricted access to ad-related metrics because no ads were purchased in a certain period. Remove ad-related metrics from your datastream configuration to resolve this issue.

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