In today’s data-driven world, it’s only logical to believe that content providers have access to a lot of data about their audience. And that assumption is right; YouTubers have access to a wealth of data about the people who view their videos.
YouTube users have no way of knowing who is watching their videos. The majority of YouTubers wish they could see who has seen their videos, but this is not possible.
There are a lot of data points for YouTubers to look into, but they don’t tell you things like who is viewing, enjoying, and sharing your videos.
Are YouTubers able to see who has seen their videos?
Of course, when we say that YouTubers can’t see who has seen their videos, we simply mean that there isn’t a stat or dashboard panel that will show you your recent views, nor is there a link for a specific video that would take you to a list of viewers. However, there are techniques to infer some of your viewers.
For example, anyone who comments on a video (and isn’t spamming) is likely to have viewed it. It’s not precisely practical in terms of data analysis, but it could be useful in some situations.
What Are YouTubers Able to See?
There are just two key scenarios in which a YouTuber may know who is who in terms of names, and those are comments and subscribers.
Every remark has a username associated with it, thus they’re a given. You can also click on them to get to the YouTube page of that user. If they’re also YouTubers, this is a quick and easy method to visit their channel and see what they’re up to. People will occasionally abuse it by making all kinds of attention-getting comments in the hopes that you will click on their name.
Subscribers are a bit more difficult. If the user in question has that functionality enabled, YouTubers can see who has subscribed to their channel. Users can opt to keep their subscriptions secret, which means they won’t appear in the YouTuber’s subscriber analytics list. Of course, they still count toward the total number of subscribers; there’s just no way of knowing who they are.
Analytics
After search… and AdSense… and a full graveyard of initiatives… Google is known for one thing: analytics. Google collects a great amount of data about the individuals who use its various platforms, and it loves to make life as easy as possible for the people who make Google money by giving them access to as much of that massive treasure trove of data as possible.
How to Use YouTube Analytics to View Data?
You can use line charts to see how data has changed over time, depending on the type of data you’re looking at. You can also compare the results of up to 25 videos using multi-line charts.
Report Summary
An overview is the first report tab under Analytics. It’s a high-level overview of your content’s performance. The report contains key performance indicators such as watch time, views, and earnings (if applicable). It contains the most important information about interactions, such as comments, shares, favorites, likes, and dislikes.
The Overview report also includes information on your channel’s top 10 pieces of content (ranked by viewing time), audience gender and geography, and top traffic sources.
Engagement
The Engagement tab displays how long your videos have been watched. You may see which videos have received the most views, as well as your most effective end-screen videos, top playlists by watch time, and other information.
Reach
The Reach tab displays impressions, views, unique views, and other analytics for your channel. You may also look at your channel’s traffic sources (do your viewers find you through YouTube search, external links, or another source? ), as well as how many times people clicked on a thumbnail of one of your videos and how much time they spent watching it.
YouTube search, suggested videos, playlists, YouTube advertising, and other features are all examples of internal YouTube traffic sources. Mobile sources, websites, and applications with your video embedded or linked generate external traffic data.
Realtime Activity
Under the Overview area, the Realtime Activity box offers real-time audience statistics with only a few minutes of lag time. The two graphs indicate the estimated views of your videos over the last 48 hours and 60 minutes, as well as the device type that viewed your video, its operating system, and location.
Audience
Your audience’s demographics are broken down in the Audience tab. It displays your audience’s age, gender, and location. The Device type tab displays which operating system and device your viewers are using to watch your videos. Computers, smartphones, televisions, and game consoles are examples of electronic devices. You can also see what operating system they were using, whether they were viewing live or on-demand, and which playlists they were most interested in.
Can YouTubers see how many people have seen their videos?
No. Can they, however, see what percentage of their viewers in England were white guys in their mid-thirties? Absolutely.
Anonymization is a key aspect of Google’s data acquisition. If Google had the option, they might not have chosen to do things this way. They didn’t have a choice, though.
As a result, YouTubers can see a wealth of data that gives them insight into the types of people who are watching their videos. They can see demographics. They can tell whether the bulk of their viewers are men or women, whether they are in the United States, and even what device they are using to watch the videos.
What the YouTubers do with that information is their business, but if you’re a viewer worried about what your favorite YouTuber can see about you, don’t worry; there’s no way for them to link any of the data they see to you.
Why do YouTubers want to know who’s watching their videos?
They don’t, to be honest. This may explain why YouTube doesn’t allow users to see who is watching their videos, but there isn’t much advantage, and some of the ways YouTubers might use this information could be harmful.
For example, if a YouTuber has been engaging in less-than-friendly behavior against another YouTuber and discovers that their victim is watching their videos, it could add gasoline to the fire.
On the other hand, being able to associate usernames and accounts with the analytical data YouTube gives adds no value. Why bother if knowing that a specific person is watching your material gives you no useful information about your channel’s performance?
What Does YouTube Keep Hiding?
YouTube does not just keep the names of its viewers from its content providers. YouTubers also have no way of knowing who has liked or disliked their videos. The only time YouTube mentions alike is when a YouTuber clicks the small heart next to a remark on their video.
It’s also impossible to know who has shared your movies directly, even though this measure is rather easy to locate through other ways, as it simply involves searching for connections to your video.
CONCLUSION
It’s natural to be anxious about what information about you is being transferred around behind the scenes in today’s privacy-conscious environment, where large firms routinely harvest and sell our data.
It’s crucial to realize that, even if your account name isn’t visible to the YouTubers you watch, YouTube is still collecting a lot of data about you, and you must be okay with that if you want to utilize the platform as a logged-in user.
However, the portion of this type of data collecting that is often controversial is less about personal safety, after all, your data is anonymized—and more about the fact that the company, in this example, YouTube, profits from your data. Of course, when you use YouTube’s platform, you agree to their terms of service, and all of this is mentioned in those terms.
Whatever your motivation for being interested in this subject, we can confidently state that YouTubers cannot see who has seen their videos.
