Understanding YouTube metrics

YouTube Sponsorship Glossary

Navigating YouTube sponsorships can feel overwhelming, especially when diving into a new platform. This YouTube Sponsorship Glossary provides a definitive list of essential terms to help you understand and master the language of YouTube advertising. Whether you're new to YouTube or an experienced marketer, this glossary will guide you through key terminology, empowering you to evaluate creators and run successful campaigns with confidence.

Channel

YouTube Subscribers

YouTube subscribers are users who have chosen to follow a YouTube channel to stay updated on its content. When someone subscribes to a channel, they essentially "opt-in" to receive notifications and see new uploads from that channel in their subscription feed. Subscribers are a key metric for both creators and brands, as they represent a loyal and engaged audience. Learn more about YouTube subscribers here.

Uploads

Deleted Content

Through our platform, we have the capability to track videos that have been deleted by channels. The 'Deleted Videos' metric represents the number of pieces of content deleted or made private by the channel.
When you add this metric as a column in our platform reports, you will receive a numerical value, which you can then click to access the full list of deleted videos.

This feature is particularly valuable for sponsors who wish to ensure that YouTube creators have published and maintained sponsored videos as agreed upon in the sponsorship contract. Failure to uphold these agreements could result in the sponsoring brand missing out on potential impressions, thereby hindering the optimization of lower CPM costs and potentially reducing the overall return on investment (ROI).

Engagement

Engagement on YouTube

Engagement on YouTube refers to the interactions viewers have with a video or channel, which indicate their interest, involvement, and connection with the content. It is a key metric used to evaluate how well a video resonates with its audience and typically includes actions that reflect viewer participation. Learn more here.

Engagement Rate

The Engagement Rate shows how engaged a channel's viewers are by calculating the comments plus likes divided by views, on average. Learn more about why the Engagement Rate is important and how to use it when vetting channels.

Evergreen Score

This metric computes the data in order to truly understand the story of each video. The evergreen score will help you understand which videos are on trajectory to continue to get views over time, and which videos have lost their appeal or flatlined. But that’s not all. With the help of the evergreen score, YouTubers, agents, marketers, and even the average joe can take a deeper look into why this specific video is acting this way, what makes content ‘evergreen’, and what makes content flatline.  With the evergreen score, we are now able to unearth anomalies instantly - bringing to the forefront videos that are continuing to get views well after they were published.

How we calculate the evergreen score?
The evergreen score measures the longevity of a video’s views by comparing the views the video had within the first 30 days after it was published to the views it had in the successive period. The scores range from 0 to infinity and a score of 1 or higher is considered evergreen, as that indicates that the video had more views in the period after it’s first 30 days than it did in it’s first 30 days.
Read more about the power of evergreen content on YouTube here.

Audience Loyalty

The Audience Loyalty is a ratio between a channel's subscribers and the Projected Views.  This can be used to understand roughly how many sponsorships it would take in order to reach a channel's entire audience.  

Back Catalog Views

Back Catalog Views are the channel's total views in the last 30 days, minus the views of videos published within the last 30 days. This gives you an idea of how evergreen the channel's content is.  

Audience

Predictions

Projected Views

Our algorithm’s goal is to determine how many views the next video on that channel will receive within its first 90 days. This helps brands better understand how a video on that channel will perform if you booked a sponsorship with them today. The algorithm offers a conservative estimate which favors advertisers so it analyzes the expected reach of any channels you are interested in booking. By plugging in the channel’s URL, its projected views will be automatically calculated and included in the computation.

Sponsorships

Sponsorship Score

The ThoughtLeaders Sponsorship Score is a number between 0 and 10 (with 10 representing the highest score) that shows the strength of a channel in regard to its historical sponsorship performance.  Read more about why brands should look at a YouTubers sponsorship score here.

Fulfillment Rate

The Fulfillment Rate is the percentage of videos on the channel that have been sponsored. Read more about why fill rates and renewal rates are critical for YouTube sponsorships here.

Renewal Rate

The Renewal Rate is the percentage of brand sponsors who renewed at least once. Bundle packages and bulk deals have been removed to improve the accuracy of true renewal decisions. Read more about why fill rates and renewal rates are critical for YouTube sponsorships here.