Glossary
What the metrics, traffic surfaces, and engine tiers on this dashboard actually mean. Definitions are descriptive and hedged — they explain what something measures, not what to do about it.
Metrics
- Click rate
- The share of impressions that became a click. On YouTube it depends on thumbnail, title, and which audience YouTube is showing the video to — rarely a single cause.
- CTR
- The abbreviation for click rate. Open Channel Statslabels charts and text as “click rate” instead of “CTR” for plain-language consistency.
- Impressions
- The count of times a thumbnail was shown to a viewer in YouTube’s UI — in the Browse feed, the Suggested column, search results, and similar surfaces. Surfaced as “Shown” in tables and charts.
- Watch time
- The total minutes viewers spent watching a video, summed across all viewers and sessions.
- AVD (average view duration)
- The mean number of minutes viewers watched per view. Surfaced as “Avg Watch” in the dashboard.
- Retention
- The share of a video’s runtime viewers watched on average — avg watch ÷ video length. Often correlates with topic-audience fit and pacing.
Traffic surfaces
Where YouTube placed the thumbnail before the click.
- Browse / Homepage
- A traffic source meaning the video was shown on a viewer’s YouTube homepage or subscription feed — often the first surface where a channel reaches non-subscribers beyond search.
- Suggested videos
- A traffic source meaning the video was shown next to or after another video the viewer was already watching. Typically the largest source for established channels.
Video state
- Era
- A continuous span where a video’s title and thumbnail stay stable. When either changes, a new era begins. Used for before/after comparisons on the
/changespage. - Reporting cutoff
- The latest date with complete reporting data. YouTube’s reporting has a 2–3 day lag, so charts and detectors filter to dates on or before the cutoff — this keeps empty days from looking like zero days.
- Pre-publish stub
- A row in
video_dailyortraffic_dailywhose date is earlier than the video’s publish date. YouTube’s Reporting API sometimes emits these zero-impression placeholders for the seven days before publish; Open Channel Stats flags them withpre_publish_stub = 1and excludes them from every aggregate.
Engine tiers
How the insight engine grades its own confidence and the channel's stage.
- Maturity stages
A four-stage classification based on video count, days active, and total views. Each stage gates which detectors are allowed to surface insights, so very small samples don’t drive statistical claims.
- Seedling— the smallest stage. Only encouragement and milestone signals fire.
- Sprouting— at least 10 videos, 7 days active, 500 views.
- Growing— at least 30 videos, 30 days active, 5,000 views.
- Established— at least 100 videos, 90 days active, 50,000 views.
- Certainty tiers (Signal / Trend / Fact)
How confident the insight engine is in a given observation. Certainty rises with the channel’s maturity stage and the magnitude of the underlying signal.
- Signal— the most cautious tier, typical at the seedling stage.
- Trend— medium confidence, sprouting stage or moderate signal.
- Fact— the most confident tier, growing stage and above.
- Confidence tiers (noise / low / medium / high)
A grade that applies to click-rate values specifically. Click-rate values computed on small impression samples are statistically noisy, so each value gets a tier based on the impression count behind it; the dashboard styles the noisy tiers differently so the noise is visible at a glance.
- Noise— not enough impressions to trust the rate.
- Low— some signal, large error bar.
- Medium— the impression count supports a usable estimate.
- High— the impression count is large enough that the rate is stable.