I think the most useful metric for figuring out if a video is actually good is watch time per thumbnail impression.
How many seconds of watch time do you generate every time YouTube shows your thumbnail to someone?
It makes sense when you think about YouTubeâs business model. They show people thumbnails, and they want those people to click and spend time watching videos.
So as creators, what we're really trying to do is convert thumbnail impressions into watch time.
And it's basically just: CTR Ă average view duration
I've been looking through my videos and the pattern is pretty obvious. Every single one of my best videos have around 15~20s watch time per impression:
5% CTR Ă 378s avg view duration = ~19s watched per impression
5.5% CTR Ă 394s = ~22s per impression
8.6% CTR Ă 197s = ~17s per impression
Meanwhile, my more normal videos tend to be around 10-13 seconds per impression. For example, one has 6.5% CTR and 201s average view duration, which works out to ~13 seconds per impression.
You can have an amazing CTR, but if people click and leave immediately, who cares? You did a great job getting the click but a bad job keeping the viewer.
And the opposite is true too. You can make a video with amazing retention, but if the thumbnail/title is bad and nobody clicks, it doesn't really matter how good the video is because barely anyone is getting into it in the first place.
Pretty much every other metric people obsess over feeds into the average view time per thumbnail impression.
Improve the first 30 seconds and reduce the initial bounce rate, your avg view duration goes up. Better editing? Avg view duration goes up. Better thumbnail? CTR goes up. Better title? CTR goes up. Better storytelling? Avg view duration goes up. Better lightning and camera/microphones? Avg view duration goes up. Posting videos about things people actually want to watch? CTR goes up.
In the end they all increase the amount of watch time you're generating from each impression YouTube gives you. Which, again, is how Youtube makes money: they show little images to the users, and want the users clicking on those images and spending time on the platform watching videos.