YouTube Analytics Data Connector User Guide

YouTube Analytics Data Connector User Guide

YouTube Analytics provides valuable insights into your channel's performance, audience engagement, and content effectiveness. This guide will walk you through the process of connecting YouTube Analytics to Power My Analytics, creating reports, and understanding key metrics. By integrating YouTube Analytics with Power My Analytics, you'll be able to automate data collection, centralize your metrics, and create customized reports to track your YouTube channel's success.


Prerequisites

Before connecting YouTube Analytics to Power My Analytics, ensure you have:
  1. A Google account with access to the YouTube channel you want to report
  2. Granted all YouTube-related Google account permissions to Power My Analytics
  3. Appropriate access to the YouTube channel:
    1. For Brand accounts: Content Manager access
    2. For non-Brand accounts: Owner access

Adding YouTube Analytics as a Data Source

  1. Log in to your Power My Analytics hub.
  2. Navigate to the Sources section in the menu.
  3. Click on + New Data Source.
  4. Select Google from the gallery of options.
  5. Sign in to the Gmail or Google account associated with your YouTube channel.
  6. Grant Power My Analytics all YouTube-related permissions.

Power My Analytics cannot make any changes to your YouTube account. This is a Google requirement for data sharing.

Creating a Looker Studio Report

Follow these steps to create a Looker Studio report using your YouTube Analytics data:
  1. After adding YouTube Analytics as a data source, go to Reports > Looker Studio in your PMA hub
  2. Select YouTube Analytics under Create Looker Studio Report (this will open the official Looker Studio application in a new window)
  3. Google Looker Studio Configuration:
    1. Step 1:
      1. Name your data source (e.g., "YouTube Analytics - Your Organization Name")
      2. Choose your Power My Analytics hub from the dropdown menu
      3. Optional: Leave "Use report template for new reports" checked to use the PMA demo template
      4. Click Next
    2. Step 2:
      1. User Account: Select your YouTube Analytics account (for real data) or "Sample Account" (for sample data)
      2. Click Next
    3. Step 3:
      1. Choose "Channel" for your reports
      2. Optional: Allow "Channel" modification in reports
      3. Click Connect in the top right to complete the data source configuration
    4. Step 4:
      1. Click Create Report in the top right corner
For a quick start, use our pre-built YouTube Analytics demo template.

Understanding How YouTube Channels Are Billed

All channels managed by the connected Gmail/Google account will appear on the connector configuration screen:


  1. You will only be billed for channels for which a report is created.
  2. Each channel for which a report has been created will be billed as an account.

Key Reports and Fields

YouTube Analytics data in Power My Analytics offers a wide range of metrics and dimensions. Some popular metrics include:
  • Key Performance Metrics: Current Subscribers, Views (last 28 days), Watch time (hours) (last 28 days), Views, Comments, Likes, Dislikes
  • Channel Overview Metrics: Views, Watch Time, Subscribers Gained, Average View Duration
  • Content Metrics: Views, Watch Time, Average View Duration
  • Traffic Source Metrics: Views, Watch Time
  • Geography Metrics: Views, Watch Time, Average View Duration
  • Viewer Age Metrics: Viewer Percentage by Age Group, Views % by Viewer Age
  • Viewer Gender Metrics: Viewer Percentage by Gender
  • Date Metrics: Views, Watch Time, Average View Duration
  • Subscription Status Metrics: Views, Watch Time, Average View Duration
  • Playback Location Metrics: Views, Watch Time
  • Device Type Metrics: Views, Watch Time
  • Operating System Metrics: Views, Watch Time
  • Sharing Service Metrics: Shares
  • Videos by Privacy Status: Public, Unlisted, and Private Videos
For a complete list of available YouTube Analytics fields in Power My Analytics, refer to the Schema Explorer.

Limitations and Important Considerations

  1. Backfilling: YouTube's terms of service require that we store data for only 30 days.
  2. Data delay: There is a 48-hour data delay imposed by Google's YouTube Analytics API to ensure quality data.
  3. Impressions: Ad Impressions and Card Impressions are available, but other impression metrics are unavailable.
  4. Time-based reports: These cannot be broken down by another dimension. As a workaround, create separate reports for time dimensions and other dimensions.

Unavailable Data

  1. Realtime data
  2. Custom fields

Show Thumbnails as Images

To show thumbnail images in your Looker Studio report:
  1. Click on the small URL icon next to the Thumbnail field.
  2. Under Type, select URL, then Image.

    The menu option in Looker Studio to select images to display as thumbnails.

Troubleshooting

See our article Basic Troubleshooting for information on issues that may affect the YouTube Analytics connector.

    Still having issues?
    Send us a ticket and we will get back to you.
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