How Youtube Fools You (High CTR = More Views)
We've all heard from various youtube gurus CTR is one of the most important metric on youtube to get more views. But it's actually a lie - here's how.
"CTR is a Bullsh*t Metric (Without the actual context behind the CTR percentage)"
𝘞𝘩𝘺?
Example: Let’s say there’s a YouTube channel with 1,000 subscribers.
The first video on the channel gets shown to 100 (100 views = impresssions) of its own subscribers (warm audience).
10 people click on it, so the CTR comes out to be 𝟭𝟬%.
Now, let’s say the same video is shown to 100 (100 views = impresssions) non-subscribers who don’t know about this channel (cold audience).
5 people click on it, so the CTR is 𝟱%.
Misinterpretation of CTR:
When looking at this in YouTube Studio, you might think, "Oh, I should probably change the thumbnail because the CTR is bad."
But that's not the real reason for the lower CTR, right?
The drop in CTR is due to the difference between warm and cold audiences.
The mistake youtube makes is it adds up all type of audiences - cold, warm, casual viewers, referral viewers etc..
Conclusion:
So, unless YouTube provides the context behind the CTR it's a misleading metric to focus on because it becomes a NOISE.
Similarly AVD (average view duration is a false metric aswell,more on this in the next post).