Example: Tracking YouTube viewer demographics with data feed metrics

Keeping track of the demographics of your viewer base is crucial to understanding how to maximize the impact of your content. When you integrate YouTube with PowerMetrics, you get access to an even more robust and informative set of analytics to visualize and track your engagement data as it evolves over time.

In this example, we’ll show you how to connect PowerMetrics to your YouTube account. You’ll then learn how to use the query builder in PowerMetrics to retrieve demographic data (view percentage by age group, gender, and subscribed status) and create a data feed you can use for your custom YouTube metrics.

This article contains the following sections:

• Finding your demographics metrics in YouTube
• Connecting PowerMetrics to your YouTube account
• Creating your query and finalizing your data feed
• Creating your metric

Finding your demographics metrics in YouTube

In YouTube, you'll find your demographics data in the Channel analytics section of the YouTube Creator Studio, under Audience by age and gender. You can refer to this information to verify your data as it displays in PowerMetrics. See below for an example of data for the demographics metrics that we’ll be tracking in this article:

Now that you know what data we’ll be tracking, let’s connect PowerMetrics to your YouTube account.

Connecting PowerMetrics to your YouTube account

When you connect to your source data and bring it into PowerMetrics, you create a data feed. Data feeds combine your account connection (the service account you’re logged into that has the data for your metrics) and your data (as a visual component you can view and edit). Learn more about data feeds.

To connect PowerMetrics to your YouTube account:

1. In the left navigation sidebar, click the + button beside Data Feeds.
   
2. Click Select data.
3. On the Where is your data? page, select YouTube.
4. If this is your first time connecting to YouTube:
   • Click Add new account.
     
   • Enter your Google login credentials and click Allow to enable Klipfolio PowerMetrics to securely access your YouTube data.
   • Next, to further define the data you're looking for, under Choose account settings, select your Channel from the drop-down list. Click Use account.
     
5. If you’ve connected to YouTube before, we assume you want to use the same account and take you directly to the next step - Creating your query and finalizing your data feed. If you want to connect to a different account, you can do so in the query builder by clicking the account connection at the top of the data preview window (see below). You can either select an alternate, existing account or click “Add new account”.
   
   That's all there is to it! You're connected and ready to move on to creating a query and finalizing your data feed.

Creating your query and finalizing your data feed

After connecting your account, the query builder opens. You'll start by choosing a data view. Using that data view, we'll run a query to get a list of available columns from within it. You'll then choose from those columns (and add filters) to specify the data to include in your data feed.

To create your query and finalize your data feed:

1. Under Data view, click the drop-down and select Demographics.
   The Demographics view contains the data for the YouTube demographics metrics you’re going to track. Its contents should mirror what you see in the Channel analytics section of the YouTube Creator Studio.
2. Under Columns, select the following: AgeGroup, Gender, SubscribedStatus, and ViewerPercentage. These columns will be added to your data feed, which you’ll use later to create custom metrics. We’ll also select StartDate and EndDate, so we can define the range of data we want to retrieve for our data feed. (See below.)
   
3. To define a date range for the data being retrieved, we’ll apply a filter to the StartDate column. Begin, by clicking the filter icon for the StartDate column. (See below.)
   
4. Then, click the Click to add filter box and select Is as the operator. For the value, enter the duration over which you want to measure your data. In this example, we’ll choose 30 days ago.
5. Click the Filter button. Then, click anywhere outside the filter dialog to close it and save the filter. (See below.)
   
   We won’t apply filters to the EndDate column. By default, the EndDate is the current day. The metric will continue to return a snapshot of data based on a duration of the 30 previous days, up to the current day.
   Go here if you want to learn more about filtering in the query builder.
6. Click Preview data.
   Note: Once you have a data preview table, you can optionally apply filters to column headers there (instead of in the left sidebar). Some people prefer that method as they can more easily see their data.
7. Click Save query.
   The data feed editor displays.
8. In the data feed editor, you can rename the data feed. By default, it’s automatically named to match the query. In our example, that's "YoutubeAnalytics Demographics".
   Note: This step is optional but it might help you find the data feed later when you want to use it for your custom metrics.
9. Click Save data feed.
   Your new, saved data feed displays. You're ready to use it to create a custom metric.

Creating your metric

The following example describes creating a YouTube Viewers by Demographics metric.

To create your metric:

1. In the data feed you just saved, click +Add metric. (See below.)
   
   Note: If you accidentally closed the data feed, you can reopen it from your list of data feeds (accessed by clicking Data Feeds in the left navigation sidebar.)
2. Under Measure, choose ViewerPercentage. This is the column from your data feed that contains the values you want to track in your metric.
   
3. Under Dimensions, note that you’ll be able to track your YouTube viewers by the following demographics: AgeGroup, Gender, and SubscribedStatus.
4. Under Date and Time, disable the Data feed contains historical data toggle to use the most up-to-date results. Each time your data is refreshed, you get the latest values.
   
5. Click the Settings tab.
   
6. Under Date handling, select Use most recent values only and select as of right now.
   
   Note: This option is used when your data includes current value totals for specific points in time and new values replace older values. Each import gives you the current value, which is the total of all values for the time period.
7. Under Format, select Numeric.
8. Under Aggregation, select Sum.
9. Under Favourable trend, select Trending up is positive.
10. Click the About tab.
    
11. Enter YouTube Viewers by Demographics as the Name.
12. Click Save metric.

Your YouTube Viewers by Demographics custom metric is added to your list of metrics (accessed by clicking Metrics in the left navigation sidebar). As its data feed gets refreshed, new data is added to your metric, enabling you to see trends and compare your data to previous periods.