What’s The Difference Between YouTube Retention & Watch Time?
YouTube retention and watch time are important metrics for measuring the success of your YouTube channel’s videos.
The more time viewers watch, the higher the chance they’ll subscribe and return to check out other videos from you!
To understand the difference between YouTube retention and watch time, we have to break those definitions down.
But let’s give you a summary: retention is the percentage of your videos your viewers watch before leaving.
On the other hand, watch time measures exactly what its name suggests: how many minutes of your video do people watch before leaving?
Let’s dive into this deeper!
What Is YouTube Retention?
YouTube is an excellent platform for your business to grow and flourish, but like every other social media site out there, retention is key!
Retention means how long someone views or interacts with a particular video before they stop viewing or interacting altogether. This metric is measured in a percentage.
Retention rate will probably affect your viewers’ future behavior: if a viewer watched your video until the end, that means they liked it.
After that, they may browse your channel looking for something else to watch, and maybe they eventually subscribe.
A good retention rate will tell YouTube people actually do enjoy your content, and the platform will reward you with higher visibility and reach.
What Is YouTube Watch Time?
Watch time it’s a great metric to measure the success of the videos on your channel.
It basically tells you the number of seconds or minutes people watched a specific video before leaving.
Again, YouTube vloggers and content creators know that this metric is important because it helps them to gauge whether subscribers are enjoying the content or not.
A low watch time can mean that your videos are boring, or that you appear scattered, or that they are not what people expect to see for those keywords.
By knowing your metrics and what they mean, you can adjust your videos to improve performance, and thus, experiencing awesome channel growth over time.
And if you want to monetize your YouTube channel right away, you can even buy YouTube watch time!
What Is a Good Audience Retention on YouTube?
One of the most important aspects of a YouTuber’s success on YouTube is audience retention.
For a new YouTube channel, retention rates between 20–40% are considered good because you’re not as well-established and have fewer viewers yet.
You need to make sure that your content is high quality in order for it to reach a lot of people.
But also, the right engagement from viewers both in YouTube but also outside of YouTube (like in social media platforms, where people share links back) is extremely important to signal YouTube’s algorithm that your content is good.
This means that it’s crucial to keep your viewers engaged and interested in what you’re doing so they’ll come back again, recommending their friends as well. One great way to do this would be by posting content regularly. This doesn’t mean quantity over quality: on YouTube, it’s best to post less but absolutely killing it with each video.
Conclusion
Watch time and retention are two crucial YouTube metrics. They tell you exactly whether your viewers are enjoying your content or not.
In case they aren’t, you can begin to find solutions and things to tweak on your videos in order to improve performance.
If you want to monetize your channel, watch time is a requirement: you need at least 4000 hours of watch time in order to be eligible for monetization.
To reach this number of watch time is hard. Usually, it requires 6+ months of consistently upload high-quality, relevant content.
If you want to monetize fast, though, there is a shortcut:
You can buy the amount of watch time you need to monetize your YouTube channel.
We offer 100% organic watch time from real viewers to help you monetize your channel without struggle.
Stop waiting and start seeing results today!