The key moments for audience retention report explains how well different moments of your video held viewers' attention. This report gives insight into areas of your video that are working well and opportunities for improvement. Note that audience retention data typically takes 1–2 days to process.
Note: The audience retention report is only available at the video level of YouTube Analytics.
View key moments for audience retention
- Sign in to YouTube Studio.
- From the left menu, select Content.
- Click a video title or thumbnail.
- From the left menu, select Analytics.
- Select the Overview or Engagement tab and look for the Audience retention report. You can click SEE MORE to see how your video compares to all YouTube videos of similar length.
Understand key moments for audience retention
There are 4 types of moments that may be highlighted on your key moments for audience retention report. You can also use typical retention to compare your 10 latest videos of similar length.
Intros
Intro tells you what percentage of your audience still watched your video after the first 30 seconds.
A high intro percentage could mean:
- The content in the first 30 seconds matched the viewer’s expectation of the video’s thumbnail and title.
- The content kept the audience interested.
Recommendations to improve your intro percentage:
- Consider adjusting your video thumbnail and title to better reflect your video content.
- Modify the first 30 seconds of your video and experiment with different styles to find one that will keep your audience engaged.
Top moments
- If the top moments are occurring in a later portion in the video, consider introducing the compelling content earlier in the video - audience sizes typically decrease over the length of the video.
- Consider creating newer content by expanding on the content from the top moments.
Spikes
- Your audience watched that segment more than previous segments.
- Your content isn’t clear and your audience had to rewatch a section.
You can review your spikes to better understand reasons for an increase in retention.
Dips
Note: Your video may not have all these moments; they’re only highlighted if they're detected in a video. Your video should also be at least 60 seconds long and have at least 100 views.
The shape of the audience retention graph can tell you which parts of your video are most and least interesting to viewers.
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When the line on the chart is flat, it means viewers are watching that part of your video from start to finish. |
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Gradual declines mean viewers are losing interest over time. Videos on YouTube generally taper off during the playback period. |
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Spikes appear when more viewers are watching, rewatching or sharing those parts of your video. |
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Dips mean viewers are abandoning or skipping at that specific part of your video. |
View audience retention by traffic type
If your video also serves as an ad, you can view a breakdown of audience retention by organic traffic. You can also see traffic from skippable video ads, and traffic from display ads. This info is available at the video level under the Engagement tab when you click SEE MORE.
Organic traffic
Paid traffic
These are views that result from paid placement.
- Skippable video ad: Views for ads that are auto-played before a video and that viewers can skip after five seconds.
- Display ads: Views that resulted from a viewer clicking a display ad, including ads shown in search results or on other video watch pages.
Learn more about video ad formats in Google Ads for video.
Metrics to know
| Average view duration | Estimated average minutes watched per view for the selected video and date range. |
| Watch time (hours) | The amount of time viewers have watched your video. |