YouTube launches ‘First 24 Hours’ analytics tool

YouTube has launched a new analytics tool that enables channels to track video performance over a 24-hour period.

Housed within YouTube Studio, the ‘First 24 Hours’ features gives creators a new metric to view the performance of videos. The Google-owned video platform announced the update on its Creator Insider channel.

The perceived wisdom of YouTube is that, in terms of generating views and revenue, the first 24 hours are the most important – particularly for musicians. However, the earliest window of time that an uploader could choose after publishing a video was seven days, potentially obfuscating that initial performance.

The data presented by the feature includes views, watch-time, subscriber gains and estimated revenues, and it also allows creators to compare the performance of two videos against one another over a 24-hour period. In addition, the chart provides data about traffic sources.

The first 24-hour performance will only be available on videos published after 2019, and it won’t work for live streams.

YouTube is the most-visited video platform in the western world, and has over two billion monthly users watching more than 1 billion videos per day. It is estimated that there are 500 hours of video uploaded to the site per minute.