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YouTube analytics: How to analyze your YouTube data

Written by by Brent Barnhart

Published on  March 7, 2024

Reading time  8 minutes

Building a strong YouTube channel starts with understanding your audience.

Do viewers love your videos? Is your channel growing? Where do your views come from?

These are all questions that directly impact your content and approach to YouTube marketing .

And one of the best places to get answers to these questions is through social media analytics — specifically YouTube analytics.

YouTube’s native analytics provides heaps of data to uncover everything you need to know about your channel and content performance. However, it can all be overwhelming if you’re new to it.

Check out this complete guide to navigate YouTube analytics and use it to your advantage.

What are YouTube analytics?

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• Grow your channel with YouTube analytics

YouTube analytics refer to the data and performance metrics of your channel. To name a few, these metrics include views, subscribers, watch-time, and comments. Understanding all YouTube metrics is crucial to understand how much you’re engaging your audience and whether your content is performing well.

Your performance data can be broken down by either channel-wide or video-specific metrics.

You can’t grow your channel if you don’t know how your audience engages with your videos.

And so the benefits of having a pulse on your YouTube analytics can’t be overstated.

1. Spot audience performance trends

Creators should be wary of blanket advice regarding what’s “optimal” on YouTube.

If you want to know what your specific audience does or doesn’t want, look no further than your YouTube analytics data to uncover insights. For example, do your viewers tend to prefer 10+ minute videos or YouTube Shorts? Do you notice an uptick in subscriber engagement when you upload less?

YouTube analytics can provide valuable information so you can create content with more confidence.

2. Learn what content resonates with your YouTube audience

While the YouTube algorithm feels like a mystery, one thing’s for sure: content formats have a massive impact on your videos’ engagement. Not to mention, it influences your ability to build an audience.

For example, you might notice that reaction videos get way more views than your explainer videos. “Create relevant content” isn’t actionable advice until you have benchmark video data.

3. Assess how assets affect performance

Remember that your actual YouTube content is only one piece of your video marketing strategy .

Consider how assets and publishing details can likewise impact your channel’s performance:

• Hashtags and keywords
• Channel branding
• External links

Figuring out how these pieces impact your content is as simple as checking your dashboard.

Before getting into the nitty-gritty, let’s start with the process of accessing your YouTube analytics.

The fastest way is through the YouTube Studio page via your desktop browser or its mobile app.

How to access YouTube analytics on desktop

To access the YouTube analytics tool, you can log in directly from studio.youtube.com . You can also click on your profile icon from your YouTube account and select “YouTube Studio.”

From your YouTube Studio dashboard, click on “Analytics” in the left-hand panel. Simple enough, this will open your YouTube analytics! Here you get an overview of your channel’s performance.

You can navigate further with the Content , Audience and Research tabs for more granular metrics, too. Click “ See More” to get more detailed YouTube channel analytics for each.

How to access YouTube analytics on mobile

From the YouTube mobile app, select your profile picture and tap “Your Channel.” Then select the graph icon (next to “Manage videos”) .

Alternatively, you can download the full YouTube Studio app which offers many of the same metric breakdowns as the desktop version. You can find a prompt to download the app at the bottom of your mobile YouTube analytics page.

In YouTube Studio, select the “Analytics” in the left-hand menu for your channel-wide data.

Below is a breakdown of the YouTube metrics you can see for your entire channel via Studio.

Channel overview and content metrics

Channel views. The number of total views your channel has received (defaults to the previous 28 days).

Channel watch time (hours). The amount of time viewers have spent watching your videos.

Channel subscribers. The number of subscribers gained within the past 28 days.

Realtime report. A live report of your subscriber and viewer count.

Top Content. A preview of your top three videos within the past 48 hours (you can also click to see an expanded list).

Impressions. The total number of impressions your channel has received in the previous 28 days.

Impressions click-through rate. The percentage impressions that resulted in a video view.

Average view duration. The average amount of time (in minutes/seconds) that viewers spend watching your videos.

Key moments for audience retention. A percentage breakdown of how many viewers are still watching specific videos at the 0:30 mark.

How viewers find your videos. A percentage breakdown of how people discover your content organized by suggested videos, browse features, playlists, YouTube search, channel pages and other sources.

Audience metrics

Returning viewers. The number of repeat viewers of your content within the past 28 days.

Unique viewers. The total number of unique (individual viewers) of your content within the past 28 days.

Videos growing your audience. A breakdown of videos that resulted in repeat views.

When your viewers are on YouTube. A breakdown of the times and days of the week that your audience is most engaged on YouTube.

Top geographies. The origin countries of your audience.

Age and gender. A breakdown of the age and gender of your YouTube audience.

In YouTube Studio, select “ Content” in the left-hand menu to see a list of all your videos.

Then, tap the Analytics icon next to the thumbnail for a breakdown of metrics for a specific video.

Engagement metrics

Views: The total number of views your channel (or video) received

Watch time: The total number of time (in hours) people watched your videos

Subscribers: How many new subscribers you’ve gained within a given timeframe

Average view duration: The average length (in seconds) of video playback

Average percentage viewed : The average percentage of a video watched during playback

Impressions : The number of times your video thumbnails or previews were presented to viewers

Impressions click-through rate: How often viewers clicked to view a video after seeing a preview or video suggestion for it

Likes (vs dislikes) : The ratio of “thumbs up” versus “thumbs down” ratings on a video

End screen element click rate: How often viewers clicked your end screen following a video

Awareness metrics

How viewers find this video: Percentage of viewers from sources such as suggested videos, YouTube search, playlists, browse features and more

Impressions and how they led to watch time: A visual representation of how many thumbnail impressions a video received and the number of views that resulted from it

External sites or apps: Percentage of viewers that come from off-site source such as Reddit or Discord

Bell notifications sent: How many times your subscribers were sent notifications for your new videos

YouTube search terms: Which terms that viewers searched in YouTube to land on your videos

Content suggesting this video: The percentage of impressions received from content suggesting your video

Playlists featuring this video: The number of YouTube playlists featuring your content

Other metrics to track

Returning viewers: How many viewers of your videos have previously watched your content

Unique viewers: The number of individual viewers of a video or channel (not counting repeat viewers or loops)

Age and gender: The demographic breakdown of your viewership based on age and gender

Watch time from subscribers: The amount of time spent on your videos from viewers subscribed to your channel

Top geographies: A breakdown of the locations where your videos are viewed the most

Top subtitle / CC languages: The most common languages that appear in subtitles for your videos

Unsurprisingly, you can also find heaps of data on your YouTube ads within the platform as well.

For the sake of your budget and performance, keeping a close eye on your paid YouTube analytics is crucial to make the most of your ad spend. Especially as Google continues to experiment with new ad types and formats.

Ad earnings: The total estimated earnings (net revenue) from all Google-sold advertising sources for the selected date range and region

Earnings: The total estimated earnings (net revenue) from all Google-sold advertising sources as well as from non-advertising sources for the selected date range and region

Red partner revenue: The total estimated revenue earned from YouTube Red subscriptions for the selected report dimensions. It reflects earnings from both music and non-music content

Ad type: The format of the ad in question and its buying platform

Ad impressions: The number of verified ad impressions served

Monetized playbacks: The number of instances when a viewer plays your video and sees at least one ad impression. A monetized playback is counted if a viewer is shown a pre-roll ad but quits watching the ad before your video ever starts.

Playback-based CPM: The estimated gross revenue per thousand playbacks

Without using a third-party YouTube analytics or a competitive analysis tool , there’s limited data you can gather on competitors or creators in your space.

Natively, you can see limited data for other channels under the “Audience” through in your main YouTube Analytics dashboard. Here you get a snapshot of the activity and content preferences of your viewers.

• Channels your audience watches
• What your audience watches
• Formats your viewers watch on YouTube (videos, Shorts and Live)

Note that this data may be incomplete until you have a larger viewership to populate each field.

Video marketers are spoiled for choice when it comes to YouTube analytics tools .

Although YouTube’s native data is pretty robust, third-party tools can fill in the gaps and uncover new opportunities to grow your YouTube channel . Many of these opportunities can stem from your social marketing efforts.

Sprout Social

Sprout offers powerful tools to analyze your YouTube performance . The platform lets you easily visualize your content performance across channels to see exactly where you stand. You can also gain video-specific insights to understand how to improve your publishing and engagement efforts.

Google Analytics

Google Analytics can give you a more detailed look into your channel performance as it pertains to your website. You’ll be able to track how people are interacting with your channel page and how they’re converting on the page. You can also track the traffic coming from your YouTube videos to your website.

Grow your channel with Youtube analytics

We get it: there’s a lot to take in!

But YouTube analytics can inform your strategy and amplify your marketing efforts. Consider using a tool like Sprout Social to help you step up your YouTube marketing. From cross-publishing and asset management and beyond, our platform allows you to seamlessly combine your YouTube presence with your social campaigns.

And if you haven’t already, you can take the first step by checking out our YouTube strategy template !

YouTube analytics FAQs

You can access your YouTube analytics via YouTube Studio on desktop or mobile. If you click on the profile picture for your channel, you’ll see a tab for Studio in the dropdown menu.

YouTube analytics are activated on your account by default. However, some metrics and fields won’t populate fully until your channel hits a certain viewership threshold. In other words, your account needs enough activity to provide consistent data to channel owners.

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2024 Guide to YouTube Analytics: Metrics, Tools, and Tips

Feeling overwhelmed by your YouTube analytics? We’ve got you covered with everything from essential metrics to advanced tips.

Table of Contents

If you’re using YouTube, you need to keep an eye on your YouTube analytics. Understanding what’s happening under the hood of your YouTube channel is the only way to grow.

But what do you need to track, and what tools can help you find that data? We’re glad you asked.

What is YouTube analytics?

YouTube analytics is a term collectively used to refer to the tracking and reporting of key metrics that help you understand the performance of your YouTube channel , as well as individual videos.

YouTube analytics allow you to see what’s working on your channel, as well as which content is falling flat. This can help guide your strategy so you can grow your channel more effectively over time.

YouTube analytics also include demographic information about your YouTube audience, so you can understand who your subscribers are and produce content that speaks directly to their wants and needs.

Beautiful reports. Clear data. Actionable insights to help you grow faster.

20 key YouTube analytics metrics

Youtube channel analytics.

If you’re using YouTube Studio , click Analytics in the left menu to get started. In Hootsuite , click Analytics in the left sidebar, then choose New Report > YouTube .

• Channel views: The number of views your entire channel amassed over the selected time period. Channel watch time: The total amount of time, in hours, people spent watching all the videos on your channel over a given period.
• Subscribers: The total number of subscribers to your YouTube channel.
• Subscriber growth: The number of new subscribers you’ve gained minus any you lost.
• Realtime: A real time performance report for the last 48 hours or 60 minutes. This is a good way to get an early impression of how newly uploaded videos perform immediately after they launch. You can also find out when your YouTube channel views peak, giving you insight into your best time to post .

Source: YouTube Studio

• Top posts: A snapshot of your top performing content based on views, over a given period. By adjusting the timeframe to Lifetime, you can identify your all-time best performing videos.
• Impressions: The number of times thumbnails for your videos were shown to YouTube viewers. This does not include external impressions like website embeds or social shares. Impressions click-through rate (CTR): The percentage of people who clicked on a thumbnail on YouTube to view your videos.
• Average view duration: How long the average viewer watches your videos before clicking away.
• Top remixed: Your content most remixed or used in Shorts and the number of remix views. Remixes can help to improve your channel visibility and video views since they include tags that drive traffic back to your channel.

Source: Hootsuite Analytics

• Top referral sources: Monitor where and how people find your videos, both on and off YouTube.
• Unique viewers: An estimate of the total number of people who watched your videos over a given period. Note: If one person watches the same video three times, it will only count once for unique viewers, but three times for channel views.
• When your viewers are on YouTube: This one is self-explanatory. Use this info to schedule uploads at optimal times.
• Watch time from subscribers: How much of your total watch time comes from viewers who are subscribed to your channel.
• Audience demographics: The age, gender, location, and language statistics for the people who watch your videos on YouTube. Tip: This information can help you plan content geared toward your specific audience. We’ve got a whole blog post on how to find and speak to your target market that can help you figure this out.

YouTube video analytics

All the metrics we’ve covered so far apply to your overall channel. But you also need to track metrics for specific videos, so you can drill down to see what’s really working.

Within the YouTube Studio app, click any video from the Analytics overview screen to see the stats for that specific video. Using the Reach, Engagement, and Audience tabs for each video, you can see these specific metrics for the video in question, rather than for the entire channel.

• Views: The number of times your video has been watched, including repeat views from the same person.
• Subscribers: The number of people who subscribed after watching this particular video. This metric provides one of the strongest indications that a video connected with viewers. On the flip side, you can also see the number of subscribers lost with a certain video.
• Watch time: The cumulative amount of time people have spent watching this specific video.
• Average view duration: The estimated amount of time in minutes watched for each view of the selected video.
• New viewers: Videos with the highest number of new vs. returning viewers are actively growing your audience.
• Key moments for audience retention: This metric shows you which moments grabbed (or lost) your audience’s attention. If you have issues with your average view duration, review this to see what is working. If you notice any big dips, take a look at the video itself to see what might be driving people away.

How to see YouTube analytics for other channels

You cannot see YouTube analytics for other channels through YouTube Studio. However, you can get information about the content from other channels that your audience is watching.

On your channel’s Audience tab, check the following two YouTube video analytics metrics:

• Content your audience watches: What your audience is watching when they’re not on your channel. Use this report to find inspiration for your own channel, collaboration opportunities, or ideas for your thumbnails. Then, compile that information with these 30 YouTube promotional tactics .
• Channels your audience watches: This report shows you the channels your audience is most interested in. The same strategy as above applies here.

You need third-party software to compare multiple accounts of your own or to give you a peek into your competitors’ analytics.

Want to compare analytics for other YouTube channels you own? You can add all of your channels to Hootsuite and compare them within Hootsuite Analytics .

YouTube analytics tools like SocialBlade (see below) allow you to compare your performance against any other public YouTube channel.

4 YouTube analytics tools for 2024

1. youtube studio.

YouTube Studio is the home of the native analytics in YouTube. It’s the most robust YouTube analytics tool available. It’s especially useful for those who are primarily focused on growing their YouTube channel. (As opposed to viewing YouTube efforts in the context of a larger social strategy.)

A particularly useful set of analytics reporting features are found within YouTube Studio’s Advanced Mode. It offers the ability to drill down into data, compare content performance, and export data. Sophisticated marketing teams will find this mode a veritable treasure trove of information.

There are tons of features in Advanced Mode that you don’t want to sleep on. Google Support created a very useful map of the available features; check it out to ensure you’re not missing anything.

Source: Google Support

Some of the most useful reporting options include:

• Groups: Group similar videos to compare themes, styles, and lengths. Look for larger themes and potential series opportunities.
• New viewers who returned: This highlights new viewers who returned to your channel to watch another video. Says Paige Cooper, Hootsuite’s Inbound Marketing Lead (Web & Video): “I think of it as a list of videos that have some kind of magic sparkle dust that turns viewers into fans.”

2. Hootsuite

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Hootsuite is a valuable social analytics tool for those who want to analyze YouTube in the context of their overall social performance. You can break out YouTube into its own report. But you can also view key performance metrics alongside those for your social accounts on other networks.

This is especially useful for social marketers who need to produce reporting for senior stakeholders. They usually want to review the success of the team’s social efforts at a high level.

Hootsuite also offers the advantage of being simple to use and understand. All the key metrics are on one screen.

3. Socialblade

Source: Social Blade on the Chrome Web Store

Socialblade allows you to see metrics like views, subscribers, subscriber growth rate, and estimated revenue for any public YouTube channel. Of course, that includes your own channel too, as long as it’s public.

They offer browser extensions that show you these statistics within your browser for any YouTube video, as you watch it.

Source: VidIQ

VidIQ is a third-party tool that scrapes data to get metrics you can’t get natively. This app will let you see views per hour and pull analytics data from your competitors, so you can access YouTube analytics for other channels. VidIQ has plenty of features that can better your channel, like recommendations to improve your YouTube SEO in areas such as your title and description.

How to use YouTube analytics tools for best results

Check in on a regular basis.

To make the most of the data you find in your chosen YouTube analytics tool, you need to check in regularly. Things can change fast, and you can’t assume that the content strategies that have worked in the past will work in the future.

For example, if there’s a significant change in subscriber growth from the average, you should dig for the cause right away. Did you post more videos than usual? Fewer? Did one video in particular do particularly well or poorly?

Tip: Subscribers generally watch twice as much video as non-subscribers. If your subscribers are not making up the bulk of your watch time, you may not be making the most of your subscriber base. Try creating a more consistent posting schedule so your subscribers know when they should expect new content and make it a habit to watch your new videos when they go live.

Hootsuite Analytics makes it easier to stay on top of your YouTube metrics with the ability to schedule automatic reports, so the data comes right to your inbox.

Look for patterns

While each of the metrics above reveals its own useful data, the information picture as a whole gets more detailed when you look for patterns to emerge.

For example, look for similarities between videos that have high or low click-through rates. Over time, this will help you understand what approach works best to persuade your particular viewers to click.

Likewise, keeping an eye on view duration can help you understand if viewers get what they expected once they click. A lower-than-average view duration may indicate a mismatch between what you promise and what you deliver. You may need to revise your thumbnail and description strategy, especially if it has recently changed.

Since watch time is a key ranking factor in the YouTube algorithm , this is another important one to watch for changes. Videos with higher watch time are more likely to appear in search results and recommendations, bringing new eyeballs to your channel. Can you find a pattern to what makes viewers stick around, or causes them to leave?

Finally, watch for changing patterns in when your viewers are online and adjust your posting schedule as needed. ( Tip: Check out Hootsuite Analytics for a detailed heatmap.) If you have an active Community Tab, make sure an admin is available to create posts and respond to comments when your viewers are most likely to be online.

Make the most of your best content

YouTube analytics offer useful insights to help you maximize the effect of your best content.

For example, if a video is often reached through search, consider adding it to a playlist to help people discover your related content. Visitors who find your content through search are likely to be new to your channel. So, videos that rank well for your search terms can be a useful entry point, as long as you structure your content effectively to keep people watching.

Likewise, try reshuffling the order of your playlists to put popular videos with the highest average view duration at the top. People are more likely to make it all the way through these top videos and continue watching your playlist. The more the watch, the more likely they are to subscribe.

Watch for potential collaborators – and competitors

Understanding where your YouTube views come from can help you spot prime collaboration opportunities, as well as potential competitors who may be nipping at your heels.

First, under How viewers find your videos , click on Suggested Videos . This shows you videos for which your content is appearing in the suggested sidebar. That means YouTube thinks your content is related.

Since these videos are already sending viewers your way, they may be great collaborators. But remember that they are not sending you that traffic by choice – suggestions are based on the YouTube algorithm. So, they may actually be competitors. Have a look at their content and use some of the competitor analysis tools above to get a better sense of whether they are likely to be friend or foe.

You can also find potential collaborators by looking at External sources . This lists websites that are driving embedded views as well linking to your content. Also look at playlists on which you’re included. These sites and channels clearly love your content, since they’re already featuring it. These could be good candidates for a creator partnership or other collaboration efforts.

Finally, take a look at the Content your audience watches reports. This shows content your audience watches that may or may not be directly related to your niche. If you have a shared audience and don’t compete, there may be a chance for a unique collaboration.

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Auteure et rédactrice, Christina Newberry a reçu de multiples distinctions. Ses passions incluent la gastronomie, les voyages, le jardinage urbain et la virgule de série — pas nécessairement dans cet ordre.

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YouTube Analytics basics

If you’re reaching out about  loading issues with YouTube & Shorts, we're aware & working on a fix. Follow along for updates here .

You can use analytics to better understand your video and channel performance with key metrics and reports in YouTube Studio.

Note : Some data, such as geography, traffic sources, or gender, may be limited. Learn more about limited data in YouTube Analytics.

Analytics in YouTube Studio

Get to YouTube Analytics

• Sign in to YouTube Studio .

You can also view various reports at the video level:

Learn about the tabs in YouTube Analytics

In YouTube Analytics, you can find different tabs that help you understand your data.

Note: Some reports may not be available on mobile devices.

The Overview tab shows you a summary of how your channel and videos are performing. The key metrics card shows your views, watch time, subscribers, and estimated revenue (if you’re in the YouTube Partner Program).

Note: You may get personalized overview reports that show comparisons to your typical performance. These insights explain why your views may be higher or lower than usual. In this tab, you also get reports for:

• Typical performance : At the channel level, it’s a comparison of your channel’s typical performance. At the video level, it’s a comparison of your video’s typical performance.
• Your top content in this period : Your content ranked by views over the last 28 days.
• Realtime : Your performance over the last 48 hours or 60 minutes.

Top remixed : Your content that has been used to make Shorts. This report also shows the number of times your content has been remixed and the number of remix views.

Note: At the video level, you can find  key moments for audience retention and your Realtime report.

Content (channel level)

The Content tab gives you a summary of how your audience finds and interacts with your content and what content your audience watches. You can view the following reach and engagement reports within the All, Videos, Shorts, Live, and Posts tabs:

• Views: The number of legitimate views on your content for videos, Shorts, and live streams.
• Impressions and how they led to watch time: The number of times a thumbnail was shown to viewers on YouTube (impressions), how often those thumbnails resulted in a view (click-through rate), and how those views ultimately led to watch time.
• Published content : The number of videos, Shorts, live streams, and posts you’ve published on YouTube.
• Viewers across formats: The breakdown and overlap of viewers consuming your content by format (videos, Shorts, and live).
• How viewers found your content/videos/Shorts/live streams: How your viewers found your content.
• Subscribers:  The number of subscribers that you gained from each content type: videos, Shorts, live streams, posts, and others. “Others” include subscriptions from YouTube search and your channel page.
• Key metrics card: A visual overview of your views, average view duration, impressions, impressions click-through rate, subscribers, likes, and shares.
• Key moments for audience retention: How different moments of your video held viewers' attention. You can also use typical retention to compare your 10 latest videos of similar length.
• Top videos/Shorts/posts: Your most popular videos, Shorts, and posts.
• Shown in feed : The number of times your Short is shown in the Shorts feed.
• Viewed (vs swiped away): The percentage of times viewers viewed your Shorts versus swiped away.
• Top remixed: A visual overview of your remix views, total remixes, and top remixed content.
• Post impressions: The number of times your post was shown to viewers.

Reach (video level)

• Traffic source types : How viewers found your content.
• External : Traffic from websites and apps that embed or link to videos from your channel.
• Suggested videos : Traffic from suggestions that show next to or after other videos and from links in video descriptions. These videos could be your own videos or someone else's.
• Playlists : Traffic from the most-watched playlists that include your videos.
• Impressions and how they led to watch time : How many times your video’s thumbnails were shown to viewers on YouTube (Impressions), how often those thumbnails resulted in a view (Click-through rate), and how those views ultimately led to watch time.
• Bell notifications sent : The number of bell notifications sent to subscribers who get notifications from your channel.
• YouTube search : Traffic from search terms that brought viewers to your content.

Engagement (video level)

• Audience retention:  How different moments of your video held viewers' attention. You can also use typical retention to compare your 10 latest videos of similar length.
• Likes (vs. dislikes): How viewers feel about your video.
• End screen element click rate: How often your viewers clicked an end screen element.
• Top tagged products: Products you tagged in your video that received the highest engagement.
• Videos growing your audience:  Your audience’s online activity across your channel. Data is based on your new viewers across all devices in the last 90 days.
• When your viewers are on YouTube : Your audience’s online activity across your channel and all of YouTube. Data is based on your viewers across all devices in the last 28 days.
• Subscriber bell notifications : How many of your subscribers get all notifications from your channel. The tab also shows how many can actually get those notifications based on their YouTube and device settings.
• Watch time from subscribers : Your audience’s watch time divided between non-subscribers and subscribers.
• Age and gender : Your audience by age and gender. Data is based on signed in viewers across all devices.
• Popular channels : Your audience’s viewing activity across other channels on YouTube. Data is based on your viewers across all devices in the last 28 days.
• What your audience watches : Your audience's viewing activity outside of your channel. If there's enough data, you can filter by Videos , Shorts , and Live . Data is based on your viewers across all devices in the last 7 days.
• New and returning users across formats: You can use it to understand which format attracts the most new viewers. Also, you can use it to see which format makes viewers come back to your channel the most. 
• Formats your viewers watch on YouTube : Your audience’s viewing activity across video, Short, and live stream formats. Data is based on what viewers who have watched your channel multiple times in the last 28 days watch on other channels.
• Top geographies : Your audience by geography. Data is based on IP address.
• Top subtitle/CC languages : Your audience by subtitled language. Data is based on use of subtitles/CC.

Note: At the video level, you can find reports for watch time from subscribers, top geographies, top subtitle/CC languages, and age and gender.

• How much you're earning : How much your channel earned in the last 6 months, broken down by month.
• How you make money : How you’re making money with YouTube. Examples of revenue sources include Watch Page Ads, Shorts Feed Ads, Memberships, Supers, Connected Stores, and Shopping Affiliates. YouTube Premium revenue will be shown under the Watch Page Ads or Shorts Feed Ads pages.
• Video performance:  How much your videos, Shorts, and live streams earned for the time period. This report includes Revenue Per Mille (RPM) .
• Top earning content : Content with the highest estimated revenue for the time period.
• Tax withholding may affect your finalized earnings, if tax withholding applies. The amount withheld is only visible in your AdSense for YouTube account.
• You can also find your revenue performance at the video level.
• In the RPM card at the video level, your revenue may not add up to total estimated revenue. This is because some revenue sources aren’t attributed to a specific video. For example, channel memberships aren’t attributed to a specific video.

Research (channel level)

The Research tab gives you a summary of what your audience and viewers across YouTube are searching for. The insights from the Research tab can help you discover content gaps for videos and Shorts, and video ideas that viewers may want to watch.

In this tab, you also get reports for:

• Searches across YouTube: The top search topics you explored and volume made by your audience and viewers across YouTube over the last 28 days.
• Your viewer’s searches: The search terms and volume your audience and viewers of similar channels are searching on YouTube over the last 28 days.

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The 5 Best Data Analytics Tutorials on YouTube to Watch Right Now

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This list of the best data analytics tutorials on YouTube will introduce you to the topic and help provide a jump-start to your career in the field.

Data analytics is a data science. The purpose of data analytics is to generate insights from data by connecting patterns and trends with organizational goals. Comparing data assets against organizational hypotheses is a common use case of data analytics, and the practice tends to be focused on business and strategy. Data analytics deals less in AI, machine learning, and predictive modeling, and more with viewing historical data in context.

Learning data analytics can be a complicated process, and it’s not easy to know where to start. As a result, our editors have compiled this list of the best data analytics tutorials on YouTube to help you learn about the topic and hone your skills before you move on to mastering it. All of the videos here are free to access and feature guidance from some of the top minds and biggest brands in the online learning community. All of the best data analytics tutorials listed tout a minimum of 100,000 views.

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Tim is Solutions Review's Executive Editor and leads coverage on data management and analytics. A 2017 and 2018 Most Influential Business Journalist and 2021 "Who's Who" in Data Management, Tim is a recognized industry thought leader and changemaker. Story? Reach him via email at tking@solutionsreview dot com.

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YouTube Analytics Data: A Comprehensive Guide

By: Pratik Dwivedi Published: October 8, 2021

Do you want to optimize your YouTube content preparation & promotion strategies? Are you looking for a simple yet in-depth guide that will help you analyze YouTube Analytics Data and draw informative & data-driven insights about your channel’s performance & viewers? Well, look no further! This article will provide you with in-depth knowledge about YouTube Analytics & will help you master the skill of efficiently using YouTube Analytics Data to refine your channel’s performance and viewer engagement.

Table of Contents

Upon a complete walkthrough of the content, you will be able to use YouTube data Analytics and its numerous functionalities to optimize and refine your content, promotion, and viewer engagements strategies. You will also be able to draw crucial viewer-driven insights about your audience by keeping track of metrics such as audience retention, real-time activities, etc.

What is YouTube Analytics?

Top 5 features of youtube analytics, using youtube dashboard for youtube analytics data, analysing data using the overview tab, analysing data using the show more option, tracking crucial metrics using youtube analytics data, understanding the viewership funnel, how to identify videos that generate channel subscribers.

YouTube is one of the most popular and premier video-sharing platforms by Google that allows content creators, be it individuals or companies to create a channel and upload videos of all different kinds. With YouTube in place, you can create content and share it with the world for entertainment, business, or welfare purposes as well.

Any user that has a channel & uploads videos on YouTube is known as a YouTuber. YouTubers can have numerous roles such as video creator, producer, voice-over artists, translator, gamer, vlogger, editor, etc. that they play to keep their channel up and profitable. YouTube provides all the creators with the understanding of YouTube Analytics functionality, allowing them to keep track of crucial metrics & statistics to help manage their channels better.

For further information on YouTube, you can check the official website here.

Hevo Data, a No-code Data Pipeline, helps to transfer data free of cost from YouTube Analytics ( among 100+ sources ) to a data warehouse/ destination of your choice & lets you visualize it using a BI tool. Hevo is fully managed and completely automates the process of not only loading data from your desired source but also enriching the data and transforming it into an analysis-ready form without having to write a single line of code. Its fault-tolerant architecture ensures that the data is handled in a secure, consistent manner with zero data loss.

It provides a consistent & reliable solution to manage data in real-time and always have analysis-ready data in your desired destination. It allows you to focus on key business needs and perform insightful analysis using various BI tools such as Power BI, Tableau, etc. 

Check out what makes Hevo amazing:

• Secure : Hevo has a fault-tolerant architecture that ensures that the data is handled in a secure, consistent manner with zero data loss.
• Schema Management:  Hevo takes away the tedious task of schema management & automatically detects schema of incoming data and maps it to the destination schema.
• Minimal Learning:  Hevo, with its simple and interactive UI, is extremely simple for new customers to work on and perform operations.
• Hevo Is Built To Scale:  As the number of sources and the volume of your data grows, Hevo scales horizontally, handling millions of records per minute with very little latency.
• Incremental Data Load:  Hevo, allows the transfer of data that has been modified in real-time. This ensures efficient utilization of bandwidth on both ends.
• Live Support:  The Hevo team is available round the clock to extend exceptional support to its customers through chat, email, and support calls.
• Live Monitoring : Hevo allows you to monitor the data flow and check where your data is at a particular point in time.

Subscriber Count : The subscriber count gives an overview of how many organic views you can expect on your next video. The organic views are the ones that are without any paid Campaigns, promotions, E-Mails, or social Media Marketing. YOu can expect almost 5% of your subscriber count to convert into views. Suppose you have 10,000 subscribers, then you can expect around 500 organic views on your video. 

You might have seen many business channels get more views than their subscriber count that is because of the help of Marketing and paid promotions. But not targeting your paid pormotio0ns nad Marketing in the right way, the views will lose their value.

Average View Duration and Percentage Viewed : The “Average View Duration” and “Average Percentage Viewed” provide important information if analyzed properly. May YouTube Marketers consider it as a most valuable metric. The Average View Duration tells you how long people want to watch your video and when they start going off. 

One can make videos according to that length. If the Average View Duration is big, that means people are watching your videos for a longer time, and your video will rank higher. The Watch time is the primary factor in the YouTube algorithm, and one should script videos in such a way as to increase the watch time.

Traffic Sources (Suggested Videos) : Suggested Videos or the videos that are listed on the right-hand side of the screen to play (on mobile, they are below the video playing). These are suggested videos and are one of the top sources of traffic. To get more traffic from the suggested videos, you should make relevant, and attractive thumbnails with catchy titles.

Subscribers from Videos : People subscribe to the channel when they find their content relevant and engaging. You can track the subscriber count videos are bringing you every day from the YouTube Analytics Data. If your videos can drive more around 1% of the subscribers per view then it’s a good metric. This implies that for every 100 views on your video you should get 1 subscriber. 

If your videos can not achieve that many subscribers, then you can improve your videos and make them more engaging and relevant.

Video Engagement Report : The overall performance of your channel narrows down to how engaging are your videos to the viewers. The more engaging the video, the more likes, comments, share and subscribers your get. If you are getting 1% engagement on your video, then you are on the right track. You can consider a good engagement as 2 likes and 1 comment when your video views are around 300.

Working with YouTube Analytics Data

To manage & keep track of such large volumes of videos and creator channels, YouTube records a lot of information/data about how viewers interact with the channel, and its videos by keeping track of metrics such as shares, likes, subscribers, playlists, etc.

You can learn more about how you can use YouTube’s Analytics functionality to analyse this data from the following sections:

Using YouTube’s Analytics Functionality

To use the YouTube Dashboard to analyse YouTube Analytics Data, go to the official website of YouTube Studio and log in with the Google account associated with your creator channel.

Once you’ve logged in, click on your account name and select the dashboard option found in the panel on the left.

You can now use your channel’s dashboard to keep track of YouTube Analytics Data such as the performance of your latest video using metrics such as the number of likes, views, view duration, watch time, etc. With the dashboard in place, you can also keep track of the overall channel analytics data such as subscribers, most popular videos, total views in the last 28 days, watch time, etc.

This is how you can use your channel’s dashboard to keep track of YouTube Analytics Data.

The overview tab acts as the starting point of YouTube Analytics, and, allows you to keep track of numerous channel-based metrics such as views, watch time, estimated revenue, subscribers, etc.

It divides the YouTube Analytics Data across three different sections:

• Views:  It shows the total number of channel & videos-based views.
• Watch Time:  It represents the watch time of your channel.
• Subscribers:  It shows the total number of subscribers across all your channels.

It makes use of green/red arrows to display whether the performance metric is improving or not. You can also set a dedicated time range for which you want to keep track of the performance.

In case you want to draw more details about how your channel is performing, you can click on either of these three metrics and make use of visualisations such as line graphs to analyse your data.

For example, if you to figure out the types of days when you get more views such as weekends or weekdays, you can do so with a “viewership vs time” line graph as follows:

YouTube Analytics allows creators to draw crucial & fine-grained data about your channel’s viewers and their source, with the help of the show more option.

Using the show more option, you can draw demographics-based insights about your audience, such as age, gender, geography, etc. It also helps creators get technical insights such as payment methods, device types, operating system, the language in use, etc.

You can also use it to compare your primary metrics, such as watch time, impressions, subscribers, etc. with your secondary metrics such as subscribers gained or lost, shares, comments, etc. based on specific periods or years.

Tracking Traffic Source using YouTube Analytics

Tracking audience retention using youtube analytics, tracking real-time activity using youtube analytics.

With YouTube’s Analytics functionality, you can also determine the source of your viewer traffic, that’s coming via webpages, YouTube searches, etc. You can also make use of filters such as translation use, device type, etc., allowing you to draw insights about whether your viewers often use the translation, the kind of device they use, etc.

It will help you target the viewers better with measures such as providing the subtitles or audio for a popular language, thereby making your channel more appealing and intuitive. YouTube also lets you assign colours to each of these metrics such as traffic source(browse features/youtube search/channel), device types(mobile/computer/tab), etc. & create impeccably informative reports.

YouTube Analytics also allows you to monitor the audience retention metric for a particular video, that will help you understand whether the count of viewers is increasing or decreasing, the rate of increase/decrease, etc.

For example, if the number of likes on your videos is increasing, but the audience retention is decreasing, it indicates that your audience is getting confined to a niche having specific likes and dislikes.

Having such crucial insights in hand will help you fine-tune your content and strategies, helping you create content that your audience loves.

Real-time activity is one such crucial metric that allows you to focus on the most recent videos and draw insights that can help improve your promotion strategies. For example, if the viewership for your most recent video is decreasing, you can have a look at your comments and start answering them. It will not only help boost the chances of your video appearing in the suggestions but also help increase your viewership.

You can use YouTube Analytics real-time activities metric not only for the most recent videos but also for the entire channel bouquet.

Some other important metrics that you can track are:

• Average View Duration : It represents the average number of minutes a particular video was playing for a specific date range.
• Impressions : It represents the number of times thumbnails associated with your channel were shown to YouTube viewers.
• Impressions CTR : How often viewers watched a video after seeing a thumbnail associated with your channel

These are some of the metrics that you can track using the YouTube Analytics Data.

YouTube Analytics viewership funnel, helps creators draw crucial insights about the process of viewership, right from the very start of serving impressions from views to watch time.

By leveraging the viewership funnel, you can improve upon your watch time and click-through rate, resulting in YouTube suggesting your video to more viewers.

The main goal of your video becomes to acquire more subscribers through your videos. Your YouTube Analytics Data can help you know more about the videos that generate channel subscribers. You can use that analysis to create your next videos to get more subscribers.

Open your YouTube Analytics Data and go to the Video tab, here you can view the list of all the videos with the number of subscribers gained and lost information. Now go to the advanced mode and have a glance at all the data on your videos. 

The data will tell you the number of subscribers you gained or lost and what is the average time of the video, etc. Now sort the Subscribers column in descending order or gained order, so that the video with that acquired the maximum number of subscribers comes on top. 

Now from this YouTube Analytics Data, you can analyze how long your video should be, which will get you more subscribers. The Average View Duration column will give you the average length of your video that will give you more subscribers. Suppose the duration is 2min 9 sec, then you have to make videos close to 2 min or short videos because it will increase the chances that viewers will subscribe to your channel. 

The other method you can use is to provide call-to-action (CTAs) in videos. You need to deduce what is the best time in your video when there are high chances that people will subscribe to the channel via CTAs. People who watched your videos till the end are your target audience. You can place the CTA right before the drop-off point, where people start leaving your video. You can also ask people to subscribe by adding it to your script for your future videos.

Add the CTA at the end of the video because the people who viewed your video loved your content and are likely to subscribe to your channel. 

This article teaches you how to leverage the power of YouTube Analytics Data and draw crucial insights into the performance of your YouTube channel. It also provides in-depth knowledge about metrics such as audience retention, real-time activities, traffic, etc. that you keep track of, to refine and optimize your content and strategies using the YouTube Analytics functionality.

Carrying out an in-depth analysis of your viewers requires you to integrate data from a diverse set of data sources. Integrating such diverse data can be challenging and tiresome, especially for a beginner & this is where Hevo saves the day. Hevo Data, a No-code Data Pipeline, helps you transfer data from YouTube ( among 30+ free sources ) or a source of your choice in a fully automated and secure manner without having to write the code repeatedly. Hevo, with its strong integration with 100+ sources & BI tools, allows you to not only export & load data but also transform & enrich your data & make it analysis-ready in a jiff.

Want to take Hevo for a spin?  Sign Up for a 14-day free trial and experience the feature-rich Hevo suite first hand.You can also have a look at our unbeatable  pricing  that will help you choose the right plan for your business needs!

Tell us about your experience of working with YouTube Analytics Data . Let us know in the comments section below!

Pratik writes about various topics related to data industry who loves creating engaging content on topics like data analytics, machine learning, AI, big data, and business intelligence.

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YouTube Analytics: The 15 Metrics That Actually Matter

Published: September 13, 2023

Some marketers have an unhealthy obsession with YouTube analytics — we track too many of them. Maybe we think we can prove any video marketing campaign is producing results if there’s an eye-catching percentage by its name. But, deep down, we all know that some metrics are more revealing than others.

There are a ton of KPIs we can look at that provide minimal insights. Fortunately, we created this guide to help you navigate YouTube Analytics and measure the metrics that matter. It’ll save you from drowning in the sea of analytics, helping you stay afloat and swim safely to land.

Read on to learn about the YouTube metrics that actually matter, and how they’ll enhance your video strategy.

Table of Contents

How to Access YouTube Analytics

According to HubSpot’s 2023 Video Marketing Trends Report , 77% of marketers use YouTube to host their company’s marketing videos.

Video marketing is an expensive endeavor, so it’s essential that you can access data to keep track of performance.

YouTube Analytics can be accessed through the desktop website and a specific mobile app. Here are some instructions on how to access both.

On desktop, open the YouTube website in your browser. Make sure you’re logged in to the Google account through which you manage your YouTube channel.

In the top right-hand corner, you’ll see your circular profile picture. Click here and select “YouTube Studio” from the dropdown menu (you might first have to select “Switch Account” and choose your channel name).

In YouTube Studio, you’ll see a panel on the left-hand side where you can manage your content and channel. In this list, you’ll see “Analytics.” Click on Analytics to open the dashboard.

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Across the top of the Analytics dashboard, you’ll see a toolbar where you can access all the metrics that matter.

Switch between the main overview and the other options (Content, Audience, and Research) to assess your YouTube performance.

In the top right-hand corner, you’ll see a date selector. You can use this to assess metrics within specific periods.

One of the most powerful ways to access YouTube analytics is to select “Advanced Mode” in the top right corner above the date selector.

This will open a far more detailed version of YouTube analytics where you can create comparisons across all your metrics and create customized charts.

In Advanced Mode, you can even export your analytics and data for more customization and deeper analysis.

Unfortunately, accessing your analytics through the YouTube app is impossible. If you’d like to view your analytics via a mobile device, download the YouTube Studio app separately.

1. Watch Time

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How to Create a Comprehensive YouTube Analytics Report: Step By Step Guide

Table of contents

If you’re involved in making video content, most likely, your YouTube channel is incredibly important to your business. In fact, since it’s the biggest video hosting platform out there, as a video marketer, you simply can’t afford to ignore it.  

But to make the best use of video marketing on YouTube, you need to be able to track and analyze how your channel is performing. This should be simple, right? Just check the likes and subscribers and you’re good to go!

Well, that’s not quite true. Too many people are still focused on the “classical” metrics like likes, ratio, and subscriber count. While important, they’re hardly the only thing you should pay attention to. 

So, if you want to create a comprehensive YouTube Analytics report, you need to dive deeper into the data and identify the metrics that really matter. 

In this article, we’ll cover everything you should know about creating a comprehensive YouTube report:

How to Use YouTube Analytics

• Most Important YouTube KPIs and Metrics

How to Create a YouTube Analytics Report

Standard youtube analytics reports.

YouTube Analytics gives you more than simply raw numbers, it helps you understand your audience better. You’ll be able to identify which of your videos are drawing in the largest audience, which are being watched all the way through, where the majority of your audience is coming from, and much more. 

YouTube’s native platform is a true treasure trove of valuable insights, but it can overwhelm someone who isn’t used to it. To access YouTube Analytics, first, you need to click on your profile icon in the upper right corner and select YouTube studio . A list of icons should open up on the left-hand side of the screen — select Analytics . 

There should be four or five Channel analytics tabs on your dashboard: overview, reach, engagement, audience, and revenue. However, the revenue tab is available if you’re monetizing the channel through YouTube. By clicking on these tabs, you’ll find detailed metrics about your account’s performance, and if you need more information, click on the ‘Advanced Mode’ in the top right corner. That way, you’ll get individual metrics for each video.

You can also track YouTube channel performance directly through your Google Analytics dashboard. To connect YouTube with GA, click the Admin gear icon in the lower-left corner of your GA dashboard and then select Create View. All that’s left to do is to fill out the form and create a filter that shows only YouTube traffic. Select Filters, name your new filter, and select Custom. Finally, click Include and choose Hostname from the menu, and type “youtube” in the Filter Pattern box. Are analytics and reports that you are obtaining from YouTube KPIs or Google Analytics the same thing? Not exactly. Analytics is the process of collecting and analyzing data to gain insights directly in the YouTube platform, while reports in Google Analytics are pre-designed presentations of data that provide a summary of key metrics or KPIs from YouTube and e.g. landing page or website as well – if set so.

Most Important YouTube KPIs and Metrics 

While YouTube provides a lot of data for us to analyze, building a comprehensive and, more importantly, useful report can be tricky unless we know what we’re looking for and what information is useful in which context. Some metrics are important on the channel level, others only on the video level. 

To further complicate things, metrics that we’re used to from other types of content aren’t necessarily relevant in the same way for video. And they may be even less relevant for YouTube since it uses its own ranking and curating algorithm.

Another complicating factor is the aim of your channel. Is it brand awareness or advertising? Do you aim to educate people about your products or the problems they might solve? To help with that, we have a full article covering essential YouTube KPIs that also provides in-depth explanations and industry insights. Here are some of the big ones:

This is a broad metric that covers likes, shares, comments, and a lot more. Video engagement is a qualitative metric that can help you gauge the video’s emotional impact based on user interaction. In addition, it can assist in generating future content ideas.

This is definitely one of the most important metrics to keep an eye on. While views are important, they’re not enough. If the people aren’t watching the video all the way through, that’s a sign they’re not engaging with the content the way you want them to. In addition, higher watch time leads to YouTube ranking your video more highly in the search results and recommendations.

Traffic source

This metric tells you how to add the right tags and keywords to your content. By analyzing what the users were watching or looking for before reaching your video, you can fine-tune your descriptions and tags to better match user intent, which will give you a better chance of appearing among “suggested videos.”

Related : 15 Things You Will Learn From Analyzing Your Traffic Sources in Google Analytics

Lead generation

This metric is particularly useful for brands that use YouTube for direct sales and marketing. In addition to tracking lead generation across the channel or campaign, you can use information about lead generation to keep track of other important metrics and KPIs. 

You can use it to figure out which videos drive the best leads or most leads, where traffic to high-converting videos comes from, and where you can improve. For example, you can change the videos, change your posting frequency, update your advertising campaign, or any apply any number of practices depending on the results you get.

View velocity

This metric tracks how quickly your video accrues views. Established channels have the highest velocity shortly after the video is published, while the newer ones tend to have it increase later, as people discover the channel and start engaging with the content.

Channels with a constant stream of high velocity videos are more likely to have their video featured on YouTube’s homepage.

Related : Dozens of Marketers Share How to Get More Views on YouTube

Actions after viewing

At first glance, this may seem to be a paradox, but actions a user takes after viewing a video can be just as important as what leads them to the video. Did the viewer click on the CTA button or close the window? Did they continue watching the playlist, select a different video, or click a link in your description?

This information will tell you how to better engage with your users and keep them on your channel for longer.

Subscribers gained and lost by video

This tends to be a more important metric than subscriber gains and losses on the channel as a whole. It allows you to better understand what videos are bringing new subscribers and which ones are potentially losing them. Once you know that, you can try to identify why that’s happening and make the necessary adjustments.

Related : 25 Marketers Share How to Grow Your YouTube Channel, Subscribers, and Views

PRO TIP: Analyze Your YouTube Channel Performance Like a Pro

To find out what types of video content perform best with your audience, you may track video engagement metrics such as watch time, number of views, likes and dislikes of each video individually using a variety of tools, including YouTube itself.

Now you can quickly monitor your video content performance in a single dashboard that monitors fundamental metrics, such as:

• Average watch time. How much time do viewers spend watching your video content?
• Watch time by video. Which videos drive most of your audience watch time each month?
• Subscribers gained vs lost. How quickly are you gaining or losing subscribers?
• Number of likes, comments and shares. How engaged is your audience?

Now you can benefit from the experience of our video marketing experts, who have put together a plug-and-play Databox template showing the most important metrics for measuring your YouTube channel performance. It’s simple to implement and start using as a standalone dashboard or in marketing reports, and best of all, it’s free!

You can easily set it up in just a few clicks – no coding required.

To set up the dashboard, follow these 3 simple steps:

Step 1: Get the template 

Step 2: Connect your YouTube account with Databox. 

Step 3: Watch your dashboard populate in seconds.

In order to create a YouTube Analytics Report, you’ll have to follow the steps we outlined in the “How to Use YouTube Analytics” section and find the report you want to export.

When you enter the advanced mode or click on the SEE MORE option, you’ll be able to get specific metrics, compare performance, and export data.

Before exporting the data, you can change the chart type, dimensions, date range, filter data, and even switch between analytics for the channel as a whole, specific videos, video groups, or playlists. It’s a robust tool that does offer a lot of functionality, and you can play with the data sets and their presentation in a lot of ways.

After fiddling with the metrics and making sure the report contains everything you want it to, you’re ready to export the report. In order to do that, you just need to click on the “Export current view” button in the upper right corner.

Related : 7 Of The Most Common Challenges Of Social Media Reporting and Tips to Overcome Them

Trying to cram every bit of information into a small space just leads to clutter and makes the data difficult to parse. Here are standard YouTube Analytics reports that focus on specific metrics or sets of metrics that will tell you how your channel is doing.

The following list is not comprehensive, and some report types can be split into sub-reports if you want to focus on specific metrics.

1. General Reports

These are the basic, go-to reports that cover the most important things.

The Overview Report gives you a high-level summary of how your channel and videos are doing. It’s easy to understand, and it’s excellent for those situations when you don’t have the time to do a deep dive into the numbers.

The Realtime Report does exactly what it says on the tin. It gives you an estimate of view count data for your recent videos — including people watching them right now. This report is great if you’re putting out regular videos and want to track metrics frequently.

2. Watch Time Report

The Watch Time Report aggregates data from both the YouTube homepage and the mobile app to create a breakdown of viewer retention. It covers average view percentage, estimated minutes watched, average view duration, watch time, views, and so on.

3. Audience Retention Report

By looking at the metrics in this report, you’ll be able to understand whether or not your viewers are sticking to your videos. The audience retention curve tells you which parts of the video are popular or not and which videos, in particular, have a low/high retention rate.

4. Playback Locations Report

This report highlights where users are viewing your videos (YouTube directly or embedded videos) and lets you know where they’re finding it. If the video was viewed on YouTube, you’d find out if it was watched from the channel’s page or the video’s specific page.

5. Traffic Sources Report

If you want to find out YouTube features, apps, or sites viewers used to find your videos, this is the report for you. It lets you know if your optimization and promotion strategies are working or if they need some fine-tuning.

6. Devices Report

This report will give you information on the different devices — PCs, tablets, phones, TVs, consoles — and operating systems — Windows, iOS, Linux — viewers are using to access your content.

The benefits are twofold. First, you can adjust your advertising and promotion strategies to adjust to your demographic. Second, you can adjust the type of content you’re making; mobile users tend to look for short videos, for example.

7. Engagement Reports

Engagement is an important KPI, and it encompasses a lot of other metrics, including likes, dislikes, subscriptions, sharing, and comments.

Depending on the type of content you’re publishing, they have different “weights.” Videos aimed to entertain need to have a  high number of likes and shares, while educational videos might be looking for subscriptions.

8. Earnings Reports

Finally, there’s the Earnings report. It’s relevant for anyone who wants to post ad-friendly content and keep track of their earnings.

You can focus on ad rates if you want to determine how different ad types perform or on estimated earnings if you want to see detailed earnings breakdown related to transactions, YouTube Red, or ads.

Discover which Videos Create the Most Buzz About Your Brand with Databox

Video marketing is more important than ever, and YouTube is an inescapable part of that equation.  Tracking the right metrics and KPIs is important, but what’s equally important is being able to make sense of the data and even present it in the right way.

While raw YouTube Analytics are useful, they can be dense and difficult to parse, especially if you’re using advanced options, not to mention if you need to present it as a report. 

If you need a simple and quick way to tell how your YouTube channel is doing, Databox offers a YouTube integration that will allow you to track your most important KPIs like Likes, Shares, Subscribers, Views, etc. no matter where you are.

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Top 10 Youtube Channels for Data Analysts

Do you dream of a career in analytics or are you simply fascinated with data? Our selection of the 10 best Youtube channels for analysts will guide you through all the ins and outs of analyzing data by using the most widely trusted tools, tactics, and methods. Most of the following Youtube channels have useful content for both newbies and people with some experience who wish to improve their qualifications and progress to a higher level. Enjoy!

1. Alex The Analyst

A career oriented channel by Alex Freberg designed to make a data analyst from anyone interested in this path. The author goes over everything you need to know to become a data analyst - from SQL for different levels to Excel, Power BI, Tableau and resume advice. If you are wanting to make a career change or learn the skills needed to become a data analyst, be sure to subscribe to stay up to date with the content of this channel.

Read more:  5 Key Soft Skills of Game Analysts

2. Luke Barousse

A channel of a practicing analyst who makes videos about tech and skills for data science. Besides videos about Python and Tableau, the author creates funny things related to work and life as a data analyst.

Ken Jee deals with data science and sports analytics. The author is one of the many people who decided to move to a new field and discovered that there is too little information about it. So, he decided to start a Youtube channel and to describe his journey in data analytics as he grew in the profession.

Read more:  25 Things Analysts Hate

4. Recall by Dataiku

Recall is a fairly new but promising branded channel from Dataiku - the platform for everyday AI. It is dedicated to educating viewers about the reality of working with data (similar to devtodev analytics  - see its demo and  pricing ). They cover sme topics not found in other analytics channels.

5. Tina Huang

The author of this channel is a data scientist at a FAANG company who covers topics of data science, learning, and productivity. Tina Huang shares some favorite time-savers and productivity hacks because they are a continuous learner and always try to minimize effort and maximize outcome.

Read more:  SQL for Beginners: Query Basics

6. freeCodeCamp.org

freeCodeCamp is an extremely famous and popular channel that is known to probably all people working in IT. It has a dedicated playlist on Python especially for data analysts and many more videos on various code and IT and analytics related topics. It’s simply interesting and opens up some unexpected topics.

7. Guy in a Cube

Guy in a Cube is a very useful channel for PowerBI and learners, but it also has plenty of videos on Azure Synapse Analytics. It has a playlist for those who are getting started, for advanced students, some tips and even challenges. Explore the channel to get you the information to be successful as an analyst!

8. ExcelIsFun

Excel is the most basic of the basic knowledge that you need as a data analyst. There are many Youtube channels on that topic, but you can start with this one because it has more than 3K Excel “how to” videos from beginner to advanced, including downloadable Excel files to practice and pdf notes to summarize concepts.

Read more: How to Color Code you Data

9. kudvenkat 

SQL is another important piece of knowledge for an analyst and you cannot do without it. It has a SQL Server tutorial playlist consisting of 150 videos that covers every topic you could possibly think of.

10. StatQuest with Josh Starmer 

StatQuest is a Youtube channel for advanced analysts (from middle and up) and covers topics of statistics, machine learning and data science. The author tries to break down the major methodologies of these difficult topics into easy to understand short videos. And they have plenty of them!

Read more:  How to Find a Perfect Analytics Platform for a Game Project

• Devtodev Updates: A Recap of 2023
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• Top Acquisition Metrics to Measure on the Analytics Platform

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What is data analysis? Examples and how to get started

Even with years of professional experience working with data, the term "data analysis" still sets off a panic button in my soul. And yes, when it comes to serious data analysis for your business, you'll eventually want data scientists on your side. But if you're just getting started, no panic attacks are required.

Table of contents:

Quick review: What is data analysis?

Why is data analysis important, types of data analysis (with examples), data analysis process: how to get started, frequently asked questions.

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Data analysis is the process of examining, filtering, adapting, and modeling data to help solve problems. Data analysis helps determine what is and isn't working, so you can make the changes needed to achieve your business goals. 

Keep in mind that data analysis includes analyzing both quantitative data (e.g., profits and sales) and qualitative data (e.g., surveys and case studies) to paint the whole picture. Here are two simple examples (of a nuanced topic) to show you what I mean.

An example of quantitative data analysis is an online jewelry store owner using inventory data to forecast and improve reordering accuracy. The owner looks at their sales from the past six months and sees that, on average, they sold 210 gold pieces and 105 silver pieces per month, but they only had 100 gold pieces and 100 silver pieces in stock. By collecting and analyzing inventory data on these SKUs, they're forecasting to improve reordering accuracy. The next time they order inventory, they order twice as many gold pieces as silver to meet customer demand.

An example of qualitative data analysis is a fitness studio owner collecting customer feedback to improve class offerings. The studio owner sends out an open-ended survey asking customers what types of exercises they enjoy the most. The owner then performs qualitative content analysis to identify the most frequently suggested exercises and incorporates these into future workout classes.

Here's why it's worth implementing data analysis for your business:

Understand your target audience: You might think you know how to best target your audience, but are your assumptions backed by data? Data analysis can help answer questions like, "What demographics define my target audience?" or "What is my audience motivated by?"

Inform decisions: You don't need to toss and turn over a decision when the data points clearly to the answer. For instance, a restaurant could analyze which dishes on the menu are selling the most, helping them decide which ones to keep and which ones to change.

Adjust budgets: Similarly, data analysis can highlight areas in your business that are performing well and are worth investing more in, as well as areas that aren't generating enough revenue and should be cut. For example, a B2B software company might discover their product for enterprises is thriving while their small business solution lags behind. This discovery could prompt them to allocate more budget toward the enterprise product, resulting in better resource utilization.

Identify and solve problems: Let's say a cell phone manufacturer notices data showing a lot of customers returning a certain model. When they investigate, they find that model also happens to have the highest number of crashes. Once they identify and solve the technical issue, they can reduce the number of returns.

There are five main types of data analysis—with increasingly scary-sounding names. Each one serves a different purpose, so take a look to see which makes the most sense for your situation. It's ok if you can't pronounce the one you choose. 

Text analysis: What is happening?

Text analysis, AKA data mining , involves pulling insights from large amounts of unstructured, text-based data sources : emails, social media, support tickets, reviews, and so on. You would use text analysis when the volume of data is too large to sift through manually. 

Here are a few methods used to perform text analysis, to give you a sense of how it's different from a human reading through the text: 

Word frequency identifies the most frequently used words. For example, a restaurant monitors social media mentions and measures the frequency of positive and negative keywords like "delicious" or "expensive" to determine how customers feel about their experience. 

Language detection indicates the language of text. For example, a global software company may use language detection on support tickets to connect customers with the appropriate agent. 

Keyword extraction automatically identifies the most used terms. For example, instead of sifting through thousands of reviews, a popular brand uses a keyword extractor to summarize the words or phrases that are most relevant. 

Because text analysis is based on words, not numbers, it's a bit more subjective. Words can have multiple meanings, of course, and Gen Z makes things even tougher with constant coinage. Natural language processing (NLP) software will help you get the most accurate text analysis, but it's rarely as objective as numerical analysis. 

Statistical analysis: What happened?

Statistical analysis pulls past data to identify meaningful trends. Two primary categories of statistical analysis exist: descriptive and inferential.

Descriptive analysis

Descriptive analysis looks at numerical data and calculations to determine what happened in a business. Companies use descriptive analysis to determine customer satisfaction , track campaigns, generate reports, and evaluate performance. 

Here are a few methods used to perform descriptive analysis: 

Measures of frequency identify how frequently an event occurs. For example, a popular coffee chain sends out a survey asking customers what their favorite holiday drink is and uses measures of frequency to determine how often a particular drink is selected. 

Measures of central tendency use mean, median, and mode to identify results. For example, a dating app company might use measures of central tendency to determine the average age of its users.

Measures of dispersion measure how data is distributed across a range. For example, HR may use measures of dispersion to determine what salary to offer in a given field. 

Inferential analysis

Inferential analysis uses a sample of data to draw conclusions about a much larger population. This type of analysis is used when the population you're interested in analyzing is very large. 

Here are a few methods used when performing inferential analysis: 

Hypothesis testing identifies which variables impact a particular topic. For example, a business uses hypothesis testing to determine if increased sales were the result of a specific marketing campaign. 

Confidence intervals indicates how accurate an estimate is. For example, a company using market research to survey customers about a new product may want to determine how confident they are that the individuals surveyed make up their target market. 

Regression analysis shows the effect of independent variables on a dependent variable. For example, a rental car company may use regression analysis to determine the relationship between wait times and number of bad reviews. 

Diagnostic analysis: Why did it happen?

Diagnostic analysis, also referred to as root cause analysis, uncovers the causes of certain events or results. 

Here are a few methods used to perform diagnostic analysis: 

Time-series analysis analyzes data collected over a period of time. A retail store may use time-series analysis to determine that sales increase between October and December every year. 

Data drilling uses business intelligence (BI) to show a more detailed view of data. For example, a business owner could use data drilling to see a detailed view of sales by state to determine if certain regions are driving increased sales.

Correlation analysis determines the strength of the relationship between variables. For example, a local ice cream shop may determine that as the temperature in the area rises, so do ice cream sales. 

Predictive analysis: What is likely to happen?

Predictive analysis aims to anticipate future developments and events. By analyzing past data, companies can predict future scenarios and make strategic decisions.  

Here are a few methods used to perform predictive analysis: 

Machine learning uses AI and algorithms to predict outcomes. For example, search engines employ machine learning to recommend products to online shoppers that they are likely to buy based on their browsing history. 

Decision trees map out possible courses of action and outcomes. For example, a business may use a decision tree when deciding whether to downsize or expand. 

Prescriptive analysis: What action should we take?

The highest level of analysis, prescriptive analysis, aims to find the best action plan. Typically, AI tools model different outcomes to predict the best approach. While these tools serve to provide insight, they don't replace human consideration, so always use your human brain before going with the conclusion of your prescriptive analysis. Otherwise, your GPS might drive you into a lake.

Here are a few methods used to perform prescriptive analysis: 

Lead scoring is used in sales departments to assign values to leads based on their perceived interest. For example, a sales team uses lead scoring to rank leads on a scale of 1-100 depending on the actions they take (e.g., opening an email or downloading an eBook). They then prioritize the leads that are most likely to convert. 

Algorithms are used in technology to perform specific tasks. For example, banks use prescriptive algorithms to monitor customers' spending and recommend that they deactivate their credit card if fraud is suspected. 

The actual analysis is just one step in a much bigger process of using data to move your business forward. Here's a quick look at all the steps you need to take to make sure you're making informed decisions. 

Data decision

As with almost any project, the first step is to determine what problem you're trying to solve through data analysis. 

Make sure you get specific here. For example, a food delivery service may want to understand why customers are canceling their subscriptions. But to enable the most effective data analysis, they should pose a more targeted question, such as "How can we reduce customer churn without raising costs?" 

These questions will help you determine your KPIs and what type(s) of data analysis you'll conduct , so spend time honing the question—otherwise your analysis won't provide the actionable insights you want.

Data collection

Next, collect the required data from both internal and external sources. 

Internal data comes from within your business (think CRM software, internal reports, and archives), and helps you understand your business and processes.

External data originates from outside of the company (surveys, questionnaires, public data) and helps you understand your industry and your customers. 

You'll rely heavily on software for this part of the process. Your analytics or business dashboard tool, along with reports from any other internal tools like CRMs , will give you the internal data. For external data, you'll use survey apps and other data collection tools to get the information you need.

Data cleaning

Data can be seriously misleading if it's not clean. So before you analyze, make sure you review the data you collected.  Depending on the type of data you have, cleanup will look different, but it might include: 

Removing unnecessary information 

Addressing structural errors like misspellings

Deleting duplicates

Trimming whitespace

Human checking for accuracy 

You can use your spreadsheet's cleanup suggestions to quickly and effectively clean data, but a human review is always important.

Data analysis

Now that you've compiled and cleaned the data, use one or more of the above types of data analysis to find relationships, patterns, and trends. 

Data analysis tools can speed up the data analysis process and remove the risk of inevitable human error. Here are some examples.

Spreadsheets sort, filter, analyze, and visualize data. 

Business intelligence platforms model data and create dashboards. 

Structured query language (SQL) tools manage and extract data in relational databases. 

Data interpretation

After you analyze the data, you'll need to go back to the original question you posed and draw conclusions from your findings. Here are some common pitfalls to avoid:

Correlation vs. causation: Just because two variables are associated doesn't mean they're necessarily related or dependent on one another. 

Confirmation bias: This occurs when you interpret data in a way that confirms your own preconceived notions. To avoid this, have multiple people interpret the data. 

Small sample size: If your sample size is too small or doesn't represent the demographics of your customers, you may get misleading results. If you run into this, consider widening your sample size to give you a more accurate representation. 

Data visualization

Last but not least, visualizing the data in the form of graphs, maps, reports, charts, and dashboards can help you explain your findings to decision-makers and stakeholders. While it's not absolutely necessary, it will help tell the story of your data in a way that everyone in the business can understand and make decisions based on. 

Automate your data collection

Data doesn't live in one place. To make sure data is where it needs to be—and isn't duplicative or conflicting—make sure all your apps talk to each other. Zapier automates the process of moving data from one place to another, so you can focus on the work that matters to move your business forward.

Need a quick summary or still have a few nagging data analysis questions? I'm here for you.

What are the five types of data analysis?

The five types of data analysis are text analysis, statistical analysis, diagnostic analysis, predictive analysis, and prescriptive analysis. Each type offers a unique lens for understanding data: text analysis provides insights into text-based content, statistical analysis focuses on numerical trends, diagnostic analysis looks into problem causes, predictive analysis deals with what may happen in the future, and prescriptive analysis gives actionable recommendations.

What is the data analysis process?

The data analysis process involves data decision, collection, cleaning, analysis, interpretation, and visualization. Every stage comes together to transform raw data into meaningful insights. Decision determines what data to collect, collection gathers the relevant information, cleaning ensures accuracy, analysis uncovers patterns, interpretation assigns meaning, and visualization presents the insights.

What is the main purpose of data analysis?

In business, the main purpose of data analysis is to uncover patterns, trends, and anomalies, and then use that information to make decisions, solve problems, and reach your business goals.

Related reading: 

How to get started with data collection and analytics at your business

How to conduct your own market research survey

Automatically find and match related data across apps

How to build an analysis assistant with ChatGPT

What can the ChatGPT data analysis chatbot do?

This article was originally published in October 2022 and has since been updated with contributions from Cecilia Gillen. The most recent update was in September 2023.

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Shea Stevens

Shea is a content writer currently living in Charlotte, North Carolina. After graduating with a degree in Marketing from East Carolina University, she joined the digital marketing industry focusing on content and social media. In her free time, you can find Shea visiting her local farmers market, attending a country music concert, or planning her next adventure.

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Study: Americans need a six-figure salary to afford a typical home in nearly half of U.S. states

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If you want to buy a house this year, it’ll require a larger slice of your income.

It’s a harsh reality that Allison Dunbar, a product development coordinator and aspiring homeowner in Pittsburgh, quickly realized while speaking to her oldest brother about his homebuying experience in the same city a few years ago.

“He bought his house in Pittsburgh in 2018, and he got a very nice house in a nice area that fits his family now for $20,000 under asking,” Dunbar says. “That is not a thing in Pittsburgh anymore.”

A combination of high mortgage rates , rising home prices and low housing inventory over the last two years is pushing homeownership further out of reach for would-be homeowners, especially first-timers. To afford a median-priced home of $402,343, Americans need an annual income of $110,871, according to a new Bankrate analysis. That’s nearly a 50 percent increase in just the last four years.

To better understand the housing affordability crunch across the U.S., Bankrate also calculated how much aspiring homeowners need to earn annually to afford a median-priced home in all 50 states and the District of Columbia, compared to four years ago. Bankrate’s analysis found Americans need to earn six figures to afford a median-priced home in 22 states and the District of Columbia. Four years ago, only six states and the District of Columbia required a salary that high to afford a median-priced home.

Curious about your state? Here’s the annual salary you need to afford a typical home in 2024.

Affordability is the biggest issue — finding a home that’s in your budget. The higher the price of a home, the harder it is to come up with the down payment or to qualify for the monthly payment. Home values are near record highs, and if you want a house, you have little choice but to pay a high price. — Jeff Ostrowski | Bankrate housing market analyst

Bankrate’s key takeaways on housing affordability

• To afford a median-priced home of $402,343, Americans need an annual income of $110,871, up 46 percent since the start of 2020. Americans must earn at least $100,000 annually to afford a median-priced home in 22 states and the District of Columbia.
• Aspiring homeowners in the West and Northeast need the most income to afford a typical home. Anyone looking to buy in California, Hawaii, District of Columbia, Massachusetts and Washington must earn between $156,814 and $197,057.
• Aspiring homeowners in the South and Midwest need the least income to afford a typical home. Anyone looking to buy in Mississippi, Ohio, Arkansas, Indiana and Kentucky must earn between $63,043 and $65,186.
• The five states where the annual income needed to afford a typical home has increased the most since the beginning of 2020 are Montana (+77.7%), Utah (+70.3%), Tennessee (+70.1%), South Carolina (+67.3%) and Arizona (+65.3%).
• The five states where the annual income needed to afford a typical home has increased the least since the beginning of 2020 are North Dakota (+9.2%), the District of Columbia (+24.6%), Louisiana (+24.9%), Illinois (+27.2%) and Kansas (+29.3%).

Affordability is the biggest challenge for aspiring homeowners

Buying a home has become increasingly expensive, and millions of Americans, especially young people, feel locked out of homeownership. Twenty percent of aspiring homeowners think they will never be able to save enough to purchase a home, according to Bankrate’s Down Payment Survey .

Part of the reason is because wages haven’t kept pace with home prices. Would-be homeowners have to make $110,871 annually to afford a median-priced home ($402,343 per Redfin) in the U.S., according to Bankrate’s calculations. That’s almost a 50 percent increase since January 2020 when potential homebuyers only required an annual income of $76,191 to afford a typical home. Wages grew 23 percent between the fourth quarter of 2019 and November 2023, according to a Center for American Progress analysis of Bureau of Labor Statistics data.

At the state level, aspiring homeowners have to earn six figures to afford a typical home in 22 states and the District of Columbia, including many Western states that boomed during the pandemic, such as Utah, Montana and Idaho. Four years ago, only the District of Columbia and six states — California, Hawaii, Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey and Washington — required a six-figure salary to afford a typical home.

A surge in mortgage rates has caused the income needed to afford a median-priced home to increase everywhere nationwide. Mortgage rates jumped more than three full percentage points in the last few years. In January 2020, the average 30-year fixed rate was 3.68 percent, compared to 7.07 percent as of March 20, according to Bankrate’s survey of large lenders .

Keep in mind: Your mortgage interest rate can be the difference between spending or saving hundreds of dollars annually when purchasing a home. For example, if you locked in a 3.68 percent interest rate on a $250,000 home a few years ago and put down 20 percent, your monthly payment would've been close to $1,400. A 7.07 percent interest rate on that same home with a 20 percent down payment now equates to a monthly mortgage payment of roughly $1,800.

American families have to contend not only with elevated home prices and high mortgage rates but also with a  shortage of houses . Many homeowners who locked in ultra-low low mortgage rates during the pandemic are staying put to avoid today’s soaring mortgage rates, shrinking the pool of available homes for sale.

“Over the past few years, the supply of homes has been constrained by a number of factors, including muted homebuilding and the lock-in effect,” Ostrowski says. “But demand for homes has been growing, and there are more buyers than sellers.”

First-time homebuyers Dunbar and her husband know this reality all too well. After saving up for a down payment for five years and receiving inheritance money from a relative, Dunbar and her husband decided at the end of 2022 they were ready to buy a home. Since then, they’ve made offers on six houses, but none have panned out.

When you’re trying to buy a home for the first time, it’s hard to compete. It doesn’t feel like a shiny, picturesque experience. It’s taxing and time-consuming and you get burnt out from the process. — Allison Dunbar First-time homebuyer based in Pittsburgh, PA

Where you need the most and least income to afford a typical home in the U.S.

Bankrate’s analysis found aspiring homeowners in the West and Northeast need the highest salaries to afford a typical home, whereas aspiring homeowners in the South and Midwest can afford a typical home on much lower incomes. That’s correlated with higher home prices in Western and Northeastern states and lower home prices in Southern and Midwestern states.

Take California, Hawaii, the District of Columbia, Massachusetts and Washington, for example. Anyone who wants to buy a home in those states in 2024 has to earn a minimum salary of $156,000 annually. Out of all 50 states and the District of Columbia, California requires the highest annual salary to afford a typical home at  $197,057, followed by:

• Hawaii: $185,829
• District of Columbia: $167,871
• Massachusetts: $162,471
• Washington: $156,814

The Rust Belt and Sun Belt are the most affordable regions in the country for housing. Ostrowski says the Sun Belt, in particular, has experienced an influx of new homebuyers in the past few years . While the migration shift to the Sun Belt has made housing less affordable than it used to be, it’s “good for long-term homeowners in those regions,” he adds.

“That trend has been going on for decades, and it has intensified,” he says. “Meanwhile, some bargain-hunting buyers have moved to affordable markets in the Rust Belt and the Midwest.”

People looking to buy in Mississippi, Ohio, Arkansas, Indiana and Kentucky must earn at least $63,000 in 2024 to afford a median-priced home. Mississippi requires the lowest income to afford a home in the U.S. at $63,043, followed by:

• Ohio: $64,071
• Arkansas: $64,714
• Indiana: $65,143
• Kentucky: $65,186

Income needed for a typical home purchase jumped over 50 percent in nearly half of the U.S. since 2020

The annual salary needed to purchase a median-priced home has increased over 50 percent in 22 states since January 2020 — with Montana, Utah, Tennessee, South Carolina and Arizona experiencing the biggest jumps.

At the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, Americans quickly fled from city centers and dispersed to more remote parts of the country. Western cities like Boise, Provo and Phoenix experienced intense population booms , and their home prices skyrocketed. Something similar happened in the Southern part of the U.S. during the pandemic: Many people, particularly those living in dense metro areas, flocked to Austin, Texas and Cape Coral, Florida, which offered warmer weather, cheaper and more spacious housing and growing economies with job opportunities.

States with struggling job markets, stale economies and declining populations, like North Dakota, Louisiana and Illinois, have seen the smallest increases in income needed to purchase a median-priced home over the last four years.

“It’s all about home price appreciation,” Ostrowski says. “The states with the most dramatic increases in income needed to afford a home have experienced above-average appreciation in recent years, while those at the bottom of the list have seen much more modest rises in home prices.”

5 states where income required to afford a typical home grew the most

People looking to buy in Montana have to earn 77.7 percent more than four years ago to afford a median-priced home there — the biggest percent increase across all states. Homebuyers in Montana must earn $131,357 annually to afford the state’s typical monthly mortgage payment of $3,065. The median home price in Montana was $507,100 as of January 2024, compared to $299,300 in January 2020.

Utah’s booming real estate market is also making homeownership unaffordable for many younger Americans in the state. Utah has experienced the second-biggest increase since January 2020 in income required to purchase a median-priced home, at 70.3 percent.

People looking to buy in Utah must earn $133,886 annually to afford the state’s typical monthly mortgage payment of $3,124. The median home price in Utah was $525,500 as of January 2024, compared to $345,200 in January 2020.

The income required to purchase a typical home has increased by over 65 percent in three other states since the start of 2020: Tennessee ($94,371), South Carolina ($96,600) and Arizona ($110,271).

5 states where income required to afford a typical home grew the least

The annual salary needed to afford a typical home grew the least in North Dakota, the District of Columbia, Louisiana, Illinois and Kansas between January 2020 and January 2024.

Anyone looking to purchase a home in North Dakota must earn $73,414 to afford a median-priced home in their area, the smallest income increase of all U.S. states (9.2 percent). That’s despite North Dakota home prices falling 6.1 percent since the start of 2020, likely due to a combination of historically low inventory and high mortgage rates.

The District of Columbia, a historically expensive place for homebuyers, experienced the next-smallest required income increase — up 24.6 percent to $167,871. Louisiana, Illinois and Kansas followed, with four-year income increases that ranged between 24.9 percent and 29.3 percent.

Is it worth buying a home in 2024? Tips from 3 housing market experts

If homeownership, a widely acknowledged way to create financial security and long-term wealth, is out of reach for so many Americans, where do we go from here? Here’s what experts recommend for aspiring buyers navigating today’s housing market:

Daryl Fairweather: Don’t rush into buying a home

“Homeownership doesn’t necessarily need to be your be-all and end-all goal. It can be one way to secure your finances and build for your future, but it’s not the only way. In the short run, become more cognizant of your plans for saving to reach your financial goals. One of the benefits of renting is that it allows for more flexibility. That means it’ll be easier for you to take a new job in a new city or put yourself on a better financial path if you don’t tie yourself down. It might be a blessing in disguise because you have more flexibility to get yourself on a path where you can attain homeownership.”

Chief economist at Redfin

Jeff Ostrowski: Don’t time the housing market

“If you’re ready to buy, then buy. There’s no guarantee that the market will become more favorable for buyers. For instance, mortgage rates are expected to fall in 2024, and that means more buyers will be competing for homes.”

Bankrate housing market analyst

Danielle Hale: Rate proof your housing budget

“Something that’s hard to appreciate until you actually sit down and do the math is how big of an effect small changes in mortgage rates can have on your monthly payment. Calculate what your monthly payment will be in the price range you’re looking at with today’s rate, but also consider what happens if mortgage rates go up a quarter of a percent, or if they drop a quarter of a percent, so you already know what that means for your search price and your monthly payment. That’s important in this environment.”

Chief economist at Realtor.com

Full data: Annual income needed to afford a median-priced home by state and the District of Columbia

Methodology.

This study is based on an analysis of annual income needed to afford a median-priced home in all 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia in 2024 compared to 2020. Bankrate accessed Redfin’s median sale price data from January 2020 and January 2024 on February 26, 2024 to calculate monthly mortgage payments for every state, the District of Columbia and nationwide to determine how much Americans need to earn to afford a typical home.

Monthly mortgage payments for 2024 for all 50 states and the District of Columbia were calculated using Bankrate’s mortgage calculator assuming a 20% down payment, no HOA fees or PMI, the 52-week average interest rate for a 30-year fixed mortgage, 2022 average state property taxes, and 2020 average homeowners insurance rates. According to Bankrate’s survey of large lenders on February 21, the 52-week average for a 30-year fixed mortgage interest rate was 7.05%. Bankrate used 2020 National Association of Insurance Commissioners data from the Insurance Information Institute to factor in the average cost of homeowners insurance in every state, the District of Columbia and nationwide in its calculations. Bankrate also included 2022 statewide property tax data from ATTOM in its calculations. Based on the same assumptions, Bankrate used Fannie Mae’s mortgage calculator to estimate the nationwide monthly mortgage payment as of January 2024.

Monthly mortgage payments for 2020 for all 50 states and the District of Columbia were calculated using Bankrate’s mortgage calculator assuming a 20% down payment, no HOA fees or PMI, the average 30-year fixed mortgage interest rate as of January 2020, 2020 average state property taxes, and 2020 average homeowners insurance rates. The 30-year fixed mortgage rate in January 2020 was 3.68%, according to National Association of Realtors data . Bankrate used 2020 National Association of Insurance Commissioners data from the Insurance Information Institute to factor in the average cost of homeowners insurance in every state, the District of Columbia and nationwide in its calculations. Bankrate also included 2020 statewide property tax data from ATTOM in its calculations. Based on the same assumptions, Bankrate used Fannie Mae’s mortgage calculator to estimate the nationwide monthly mortgage payment for January 2020.

The annual income needed to afford a median-price home is based on a person spending no more than 28% of their annual income on housing, as per the traditional 28/36 rule . Bankrate’s calculations did not include other monthly expenses or debts. Income data in this analysis is adjusted for inflation using the Consumer Price Index. In this report, Bankrate defines an “aspiring homeowner or homebuyer” as someone who will take out a mortgage to finance a home purchase. Results in this study in no way indicate approval or financing of a mortgage.

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Some of the Most Popular Websites Share Your Data With Over 1,500 Companies

Everywhere you go online, you’re being tracked. Almost every time you visit a website, trackers gather data about your browsing and funnel it back into targeted advertising systems , which build up detailed profiles about your interests and make big profits in the process. In some places, you’re tracked more than others.

In a little-noticed change at the end of last year, thousands of websites started being more transparent about how many companies your data is being shared with. In November, those infuriating cookie pop-ups —which ask your permission to collect and share data—began sharing how many advertising “partners” each website is working with, giving a further glimpse of the sprawling advertising ecosystem. For many sites, it’s not pretty.

A WIRED analysis of the top 10,000 most popular websites shows that dozens of sites say they are sharing data with more than 1,000 companies, while thousands of other websites are sharing data with hundreds of firms. Quiz and puzzle website JetPunk tops the pile, listing 1,809 “partners” that may collect personal information, including “browsing behavior or unique IDs.”

More than 20 websites from publisher Dotdash Meredith—including Investopedia.com, People.com, and Allrecipes.com—all say they can share data with 1,609 partners. The newspaper The Daily Mail lists 1,207 partners, while internet speed-monitoring firm Speedtest.net, online medical publisher WebMD, and media outlets Reuters, ESPN, and BuzzFeed all state they can share data with 809 companies. (WIRED, for context, lists 164 partners.) These hundreds of advertising partners include dozens of firms most people have likely never heard of.

“You can always assume all of them are first going to try and disambiguate who you are,” says Midas Nouwens , an associate professor at Aarhus University in Denmark, who has previously built tools to automatically opt out of tracking by cookie pop-ups and helped with the website analysis. The data collected can vary by website, and the cookie pop-ups allow some control over what can be gathered; however, the information can include IP addresses, fingerprinting of devices , and various identifiers. “Once they know that, they might add you to different data sets, or use it for enrichment later when you go to a different site,” Nouwens says.

The online advertising world is a messy, murky space , which can involve networks of companies building profiles of people with the aim of showing you tailored ads the second you open a webpage. For years, strong privacy laws in Europe, such as the GDPR, have resulted in websites showing cookie consent pop-ups that ask for permission to store cookies that collect data on your device. In recent years, studies have shown that cookie pop-ups have included dark patterns , disregarded people’s choices , and are ignored by people. “Every single person we’ve ever observed in user testing doesn't read any of this. They find the fastest way they can to close it out,” says Peter Dolanjski, a product director at privacy-focused search engine and browser DuckDuckGo . “So they end up in a worse privacy state.”

For the website analysis, Nouwens scraped the 10,000 most popular websites and analyzed whether the collected pop-ups mentioned partners and, if so, the number they disclosed. WIRED manually verified all the websites mentioned in this story, visiting each to confirm the number of partners they displayed. We looked at the highest total number of partners within the whole data set, and the highest number of partners for the top 1,000 most popular websites. The process, which is only a snapshot of how websites share data, provides one view of the complex ecosystem. The results can vary depending on where in the world someone visits a website from.

It also only includes websites using just one system to display cookie pop-ups. Many of the world’s biggest websites—think Google, Facebook, and TikTok—use their own cookie pop-ups. However, thousands of websites, including publishers and retailers, use third-party technology, made by consent management platforms (CMPs), to show the pop-ups. These pop-ups largely follow standards from the marketing and advertising group IAB Europe, which details the information that should be included in the cookie pop-ups.

R Douglas Fields

Kate O'Flaherty

In November 2023 , IAB Europe updated its Transparency and Consent Framework , in response to rulings saying it didn’t comply with Europe’s GDPR , to include the provision that companies should disclose how many partners they're sharing user data with on the first pages of their websites. Townsend Feehan, the CEO of IAB Europe, says the update “includes a number of meaningful iterations,” which provide people with more information about what data may be shared and include changes such as making a “reject all” option prominently available. “The addition of the number of vendors corresponds to a recommendation made by the CNIL [the French data privacy regulator] and is meant to help end-users to have a reasonable expectation, before they even access the secondary layer of the CMP, of how many vendors feature on the transparency pop-up,” Feehan says.

However, adding the number of companies data is shared with becomes meaningless if the number is too large, Nouwens says. “If it’s anything more than five, or maybe 10, it becomes untenable,” the researcher adds. “That's still too many for anybody to really form an opinion on considering how opaque and complex this whole data processing pipeline is.”

While individual websites may say data can be shared with hundreds of third-party companies, they may not be doing it directly themselves—the owner of one tracker may ultimately share that data with other advertising companies. The majority of websites contacted for this story did not respond to a request for comment about their data sharing; however, those that did showed the complexity of the advertising industry.

A BuzzFeed spokesperson says they approved all of the IAB’s list of vendors , resulting in 809 partners being shown, but the spokesperson says, in reality, the number of partners it works with is 220. Paul Evans, managing director at news discovery platform NewsNow , says that it only has “direct relationships with a handful” of advertising exchanges, and its 1,298 disclosed figure is the total of the partners those firms work with.

“We have limited insight into, and ability to influence, their operations, terms of business, or the partners they choose to work with,” Evans says, also pointing toward Google’s long-running aim to remove third-party cookies from its Chrome browser later this year. “We expect the technical opportunities for our ad exchanges’ partners to process our users’ data (even with our users' consent) will decrease, while the ease with which our users can deny consent will increase,” Evans says.

While the disclosures may not provide as much transparency as intended, it’s also possible to analyze the number of trackers that are directly placed on websites. DuckDuckGo keeps a record of the companies that have the biggest tracking footprint across the web . For example, while WebMD and ESPN disclose 809 partners on their cookie pop-ups, DuckDuckGo’s data shows there are 96 and 33 trackers present on their websites when they were scanned. Among the most common trackers, Google has its technology on 79 percent of websites, while those from five other companies are on more than 20 percent of websites.

“For the end user, the reality is, there is a myriad of tracking that happens, there’s a myriad of techniques through which it happens,” DuckDuckGo’s Dolanjski says. Using a privacy browser , making your searches private , and adopting a few basic practices can help keep you more private online .

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How DJ Burns, NC State beat Duke in Elite 8 to reach Final 4

Final Four complete with NC State’s win over Duke

NC State, which had to win five games in five days in early March to merely qualify for the NCAA Tournament, tied a record as the lowest seed to reach the Final Four with its 76-64 win over Duke on Sunday in Dallas.

NC State, a No. 11 seed, completes a Final Four that includes No. 1 seeds Connecticut and Purdue and No. 4 seed Alabama . NC State will face Purdue in one semifinal, while UConn and Alabama will meet in the other on Saturday at State Farm Stadium in Glendale, Ariz.

Connecticut (35-3) is the clear favorite after defeating its four NCAA Tournament opponents by an average of 27.8 points. The Huskies cruised through the Sweet 16 and Elite Eight rounds this weekend in Boston, hammering San Diego State by 30 points and Illinois by 25 to win the East Regional.

UConn is looking to become the first program to repeat since Florida in 2006 and 2007.

Purdue (33-4) is seeking redemption. The Boilermakers were the overall No. 1 seed a year ago when they lost to 16th-seeded Fairleigh Dickinson, only the second 16-over-1 upset in men’s tournament history. But Purdue, led by 7-foot-4 center Zach Edey regrouped and defeated No. 16 Grambling State, No. 8 Utah State, No. 5 Gonzaga and No. 2 Tennessee en route to its first Final Four since 1980.

Alabama (25-11) entered the tournament with an elite offense and suspect defense but proved offense can win out. The Crimson Tide averaged 89.8 points per game in wins over No. 13 Charleston, No. 12 Grand Canyon, No. 1 North Carolina and No. 6 Clemson. This is their first Final Four appearance.

Finally, there’s NC State. On March 12, the Wolfpack were losers of four straight when they entered the ACC tournament as the No. 10 seed in the 15-team field. But they won five consecutive games in Washington, D.C., to punch their ticket to the NCAA Tournament. Led by 6-foot-9, 275-pound center DJ Burns Jr. , who has cemented his status as a March folk hero, NC State beat No. 6 Texas Tech , No. 14 Oakland, No. 4 Marquette and No. 2 Duke during the past two weekends.

NC State is the sixth No. 11 seed to make a Final Four, joining LSU (1986), George Mason (2006), VCU (2011), Loyola Chicago (2018) and UCLA (2021).

Game times are set for Saturday:

• NC State vs. Purdue: 6:09 p.m. ET
• UConn vs. Alabama: 8:49 p.m. ET

Finals MVP Nikola Jokic is a fan of DJ Burns Jr.

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Men’s NCAA Tournament Final Four schedule set: UConn to battle Alabama in late slot

With NC State taking yet another step in its glass Cinderella slipper Sunday night, the 2024 men’s NCAA Tournament is officially whittled down to four teams. The Final Four will take place on Saturday, April 6.

NC State will face Purdue in the first game of the day, with tipoff scheduled for 6:09 p.m. ET. While the No. 11-seeded Wolfpack have become a national darling throughout their tournament run, the No. 1-seed Boilermakers have lived up to their top-seeded billing with multiple tough wins over elite opponents.

The matchup won’t just be between a Cinderella and a powerhouse, but stylistic opposites as well. Bruising NC State big man DJ Burns Jr. will battle with skyscraping Purdue center Zach Edey, and the Wolfpack’s sparkplug guard DJ Horne will oppose the Boilermakers’ maestro Braden Smith in the contest of the champions of the South and Midwest quadrants.

Cutting down the nets

DJ Burns and the NC State Wolfpack are enjoying the celebration.

Keatts on the win

NC State coach Kevin Keatts on his players and their magical run.

DJ Burns Jr. speaks on what changed to make this Final 4 run to CBS' Tracy Wolfson

"There's been a total switch in our commitment, nobody is being late to things, nobody is being a problem on the court", Burns Jr. said. "Everyone has come together and everyone is handling everything on and off the court well."

We're down to four

Four four Phoenix.

Saturday's games:

Enjoying the moment

NC State is still marching. Purdue is up next.

NC State doubles up

NC State men's and women's basketball teams are both going to the Final Four.

Wolfpack are having fun

For DJ Burns and the NC State Wolfpack, the fun is still going.

Burns leads all-region team

(Photo: Kevin Jairaj / USA Today)

NC State's DJ Burns was named the Most Outstanding Player of the South Region. He was joined on the all-region team by NC State teammate DJ Horne, Duke's Jared McCain and Kyle Filipowski and Marquette's Tyler Kolek.

Nine straight = trip to Phoenix

NC State has won nine straight postseason games.

NC State's unlikely run should have never started

If Virginia had fouled up three in the ACC tournament, NC State would not be going to the Final Four. That's ridiculous to even think about.

ACC's surprise team in Final Four: NC State

DALLAS — The ACC will have a representative at the Final Four. It may not be one many expected to start the season.

DJ Burns Jr. scored 29 points, including 21 in the second half, to carry the 11th-seeded Wolfpack to a 76-64 win over fourth-seeded Duke in Sunday's South Regional final, punching the program's first ticket to the Final Four since Jim Valvano and company won it all in 1983.

In Phoenix, the Wolfpack will face Zach Edey and Purdue, which advanced earlier in the day with a win over Tennessee.

Burns scored only four points in the Wolfpack's Sweet 16 matchup against Marquette but made his mark on that game with seven assists.

"You're going to double-team, I'm going to do my best to make you pay," Burns said Saturday ahead of the Duke game.

Regardless of defenders, the 6-foot-9 big man charged the Blue Devils on Sunday. A lot.

He scored NC State's first four points, but foul trouble later in the half kept him from completely dominating. NC State trailed 27-21 at halftime. After that, it was all about Burns, who was named Most Outstanding Player of the South Region.

It was the third time in the past month the two teams faced each other. In an NC State loss on March 4, Burns scored 27. In a Wolfpack victory in the ACC tournament on March 14, Burns scored only 10. On Sunday, he put it all together -- big numbers and an even bigger victory -- capped by a three-point play with just under a minute left.

Continue reading.

NC State topples Duke, continues March run to advance to first Final Four since 1983

The timeout that changed everything

Nineteen days ago, NC State trailed Louisville 23-11 seven minutes into its opening-round ACC tournament game. Kevin Keatts called a timeout.

Who saw this coming at that point?

Tip times for the Final Four on Saturday

DJ Burns Jr. puts an exclamation point on his 26-point performance. NC State up 65-52 with 1:55 to play.

Dancing bear

Kyle Filipowski fouls out.

Duke is down 56-44, 4:52 to go.

Oh boy. Technical on NC State coach Kevin Keatts after the officials get confused on a loose ball that goes off the shot clock. They weren't sure if it was deflected andcalled it Duke ball.

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The Five Minutes That Brought Down the Francis Scott Key Bridge

When a massive cargo ship lost power in Baltimore, crews scrambled to control the ship and to evacuate the bridge lying ahead. But it was too late.

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By Annie Correal ,  Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs ,  Campbell Robertson ,  Michael Forsythe and Mike Baker

Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs and Campbell Robertson reported from Baltimore, Annie Correal and Michael Forsythe from New York, and Mike Baker from Seattle.

Follow our live coverage of the Francis Scott Key Bridge collapse in Baltimore .

“Hold all traffic on the Key Bridge.”

The terse command from an officer in Baltimore’s busy commercial shipping port was one of the first warnings of a disaster that experts now predict will transform shipping on the Eastern Seaboard and change how ships and bridges function around the world. But after the cargo ship Dali lost power early Tuesday, there were precious few minutes to act.

In those minutes, many people — from the ship’s crew, who sent out a mayday signal, to the transportation authority police officers, who stopped traffic heading onto the Francis Scott Key Bridge — did what they could to avert catastrophe, most likely saving many lives.

And yet — no matter what anyone did — several factors made catastrophe all but inevitable. When a ship of this size loses engine power, there is little to be done to correct its course, even dropping an anchor down. And the Key Bridge was particularly vulnerable. As long ago as 1980, engineers had warned that the bridge, because of its design, would never be able to survive a direct hit from a container ship.

The collision and subsequent collapse of the bridge swallowed up seven road workers and an inspector who could not be alerted and pulled off the bridge in time; two were pulled alive out of the water, but four others are still missing and presumed dead. Two bodies were retrieved on Wednesday, authorities said.

Also caught up in the disaster were the ship’s 21 crew members, all from India, who had prepared for a long journey to Sri Lanka on the Dali. While none of them were hurt, they would be held on board for more than a day as the ship sat in the harbor, the ruins of the bridge tangled around it, as authorities began their investigation.

The accident, the deadliest bridge collapse in the United States in more than a decade, will have a lasting impact on the Port of Baltimore, with its 8,000 workers, and industries that rely on the port, which is the leading American hub for auto and other wheeled equipment, said Pete Buttigieg, the U.S. transportation secretary, on Wednesday.

“It’s difficult to overstate the impact of this collision,” Mr. Buttigieg said.

He compared the Dali, roughly as long a city block, to the size of an American aircraft carrier.

“A hundred thousand tons, all going into this pier all at once,” he said of the impact on the bridge support structure.

Officials from the National Transportation Safety Board, which is leading the investigation into the accident, boarded the Dali on Tuesday night to gather documentation. They obtained data from the voyage data recorder, the equivalent of an aircraft’s black box, hoping that it could help investigators determine what led to the accident.

Mr. Buttigieg said that any private party found liable in the accident “will be held responsible.”

The ship left the Port

of Baltimore around

1 a.m. on Tuesday.

Ship called for

tugboats to return

Francis Scott

Alarms sounded on ship

Traffic onto bridge was halted

The ship hit

at 1:28 a.m.

Alarms sounded

Traffic onto bridge

Sources: MarineTraffic, Google Earth

By Agnes Chang, Weiyi Cai, and Leanne Abraham

It was about half an hour past midnight on Tuesday when the Dali, loaded with cargo containers, departed its dock, guided by two tugboats, as is customary. On board was a local harbor pilot with more than 10 years of experience and deep familiarity with Baltimore’s port, as well as an apprentice pilot in training.

The sky above the Patapsco River was clear and still, lit by a full moon.

At 1:25 a.m., after the two tugboats detached and turned back, the Dali had accelerated to about 10 miles per hour as it approached the Key Bridge. But just then, according to a timeline released by the National Transportation Safety Board on Wednesday, “numerous audible alarms” started sounding on the ship.

For reasons still being investigated, the ship’s powerful propulsion system stopped. The lights flickered out.

The ship had a “complete blackout,” according to Clay Diamond, head of the American Pilots’ Association, who was briefed on the account of the pilot of the Dali. (The chair of the N.T.S.B., Jennifer Homendy, said officials were still trying to determine whether the power failure was complete.)

The harbor pilot noticed the ship starting to swing right, in the direction of one of the piers holding up the Key Bridge. At 1:26, he called for the tugs to return; he urged the captain to try to get the engine back up and directed the crew to steer hard left. As a last ditch measure, at 1:27, he ordered the crew to throw down the port anchor.

One of the tugboats, the Eric McAllister, turned around and raced back toward the ship.

But the failures onboard were cascading. The emergency generator had kicked on, sending a puff of thick smoke belching from the ship’s exhaust stack and briefly restoring the lights, radar and steering. It did not help. With no effective propulsion, the 95,000-ton ship had become an unstoppable object, drifting toward one of the most heavily traveled bridges in Baltimore.

On land, officers with the Maryland Transportation Authority moved swiftly into action. “I need one of you guys on the South side, one of you guys on the North side, hold all traffic on the Key Bridge,” someone is heard saying on the audio recording of emergency radio traffic that night. “There’s a ship approaching that just lost their steering. So until they get that under control, we’ve got to stop all traffic.”

Vehicles were held on either side of the bridge as the ship continued its inexorable drift toward the 1.6-mile-long span.

A minute later, the officers turned their attention to several workers, some of them immigrants from Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador and Mexico, who were still laboring on the bridge in the chilly darkness, taking advantage of the light traffic at night to fix potholes.

“There’s a crew up there,” one officer is heard saying on the audio recording of the radio exchange between officers. “You might want to notify whoever the foreman is, see if we could get them off the bridge temporarily.”

But even then, the ship was striking the bridge. Almost at once, the pier buckled and collapsed, twisting over the ship, with its cargo containers stacked high on the deck. Then the rest of the bridge went, breaking into sections as it plummeted and splashed into the dark river waters below.

“The size and weight of these ships make them really difficult, even with propulsion, to stop them,” said Stash Pelkowski, a professor at State University of New York Maritime College and a retired Coast Guard rear admiral. With no power, he said, “There was very little the pilot or the crew on the Dali could do.”

The collapse had happened in seconds. Except for the stumps of the piers, the central span of the bridge had plunged into the frigid river — where divers would spend the whole day searching amid twisted metal for survivors — by 1:29 a.m.

“Dispatch, the whole bridge just fell down!” an officer called out. “Whoever, everybody, the whole bridge just collapsed.”

Stray ships had long been seen as a risk to the Key Bridge. Just a few years after the Baltimore structure was constructed in 1977, a vessel crash knocked down the Sunshine Skyway Bridge in Tampa Bay, Fla., killing 35 people.

Officials acknowledged that the Key Bridge would not be able to withstand that kind of direct hit from a heavy cargo vessel. “I would have to say if that ship hit the Bay Bridge or the Key Bridge — I’m talking about the main supports, a direct hit — it would knock it down,” John Snyder, the director of engineering for the state Toll Facilities Administration told the Baltimore Sun at the time.

But building a bridge that could withstand such an impact was simply not economically feasible, he said. When the bridge was built, cargo ships were not the size they are today. A much smaller freighter did hit the bridge in 1980 , but the bridge stood strong.

Minutes after the bridge collapsed on Tuesday, both tugboats that had accompanied the Dali arrived on scene, followed soon by the Coast Guard and the Baltimore City Fire Department.

Two of the workers who had been on the bridge were rescued from the water. The others could not be found.

Jack Murphy, who owns Brawner Builders, the company whose workers had been on the bridge, got a phone call about the collapse and raced to the area, about a 30-minute drive away. He stayed by the bridge all night, and eventually began making calls to the men’s families.

Two workers’ bodies were discovered in a red pickup truck found near the bridge debris, police said Wednesday. They were identified as Alejandro Hernandez Fuentes, 35, an immigrant from Mexico, and Dorlian Ronial Castillo Cabrera, 26, a native of Guatemala.

About two miles from the bridge, Andrew Middleton had been lying awake when he heard the crash. He first thought it was thunder, maybe a low-flying jet.

It was only when he awoke a few hours later that he saw the news of the collapsed bridge. “I thought to myself, I was just with those guys yesterday,” he said.

Mr. Middleton, who runs Apostleship of the Sea, a program that ministers to sailors coming through the port, had driven the ship’s captain and a few crew members to Walmart on Monday to stock up on goods for the 28-day voyage ahead — toothpaste, snacks, clothes, Bluetooth speakers.

He recalled the captain telling him their next port was Sri Lanka, but that they were taking a longer route, down around South Africa, in order to avoid recent Houthi attacks on cargo ships in the Red Sea.

Mr. Middleton immediately messaged the crew on WhatsApp after hearing the news on Tuesday, he said, and “they responded within a few minutes saying that everyone was OK,” he said.

Around the site of the bridge collapse, firefighters and rescuers in diving gear were swarming around the shore, followed by news crews. John McAvoy, who owns a nearby restaurant, had driven over with hot meals — chicken, crab balls and pretzel bites — to hand out to the crews.

But by nightfall on Tuesday, officials had called off the rescue efforts and said they would switch to searching for bodies. “The water’s deep, visibility’s low, it’s cold as I-don’t-know-what,” said Kevin Cartwright, a spokesman for the Fire Department.

The signs of all that had changed were only starting to become clear on Wednesday. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers said it was mobilizing more than 1,100 specialists to clear the wreckage of the bridge and unblock the Port of Baltimore’s shipping lane. In the meantime, Mr. Buttigieg, the secretary of transportation, said the East Coast would have to rely more heavily on ports outside Baltimore.

Mr. McAvoy said the tragedy would ripple over the port for years.

Fishing crews always have found their way home following the Key Bridge, he said. “It’s going to change a lot of things for a lot of people.”

Reporting was contributed by Daniel Victor , Jacey Fortin , Zach Montague , Eduardo Medina , Miriam Jordan and Judson Jones . Susan C. Beachy contributed research.

Annie Correal reports from the U.S. and Latin America for The Times. More about Annie Correal

Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs reports on national stories across the United States with a focus on criminal justice. He is from upstate New York. More about Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs

Campbell Robertson reports on Delaware, the District Columbia, Kentucky, Maryland, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Virginia, for The Times. More about Campbell Robertson

Michael Forsythe a reporter on the investigations team at The Times, based in New York. He has written extensively about, and from, China. More about Michael Forsythe

Mike Baker is a national reporter for The Times, based in Seattle. More about Mike Baker

What we know about the container ship that crashed into the Baltimore bridge

• The ship that crashed into the Francis Scott Key Bridge on Tuesday was the Singapore-flagged Dali.
• The container ship had been chartered by Maersk, the Danish shipping company. 
• Two people were recovered from the water but six remain missing, authorities said.

A container ship crashed into a major bridge in Baltimore early Tuesday, causing its collapse into the Patapsco River.

A livestream showed vehicles traveling on the Francis Scott Key Bridge just moments before the impact at 1:28 a.m. ET.

Baltimore first responders called the situation a "developing mass casualty event" and a "dire emergency," per The Associated Press.

James Wallace, chief of the Baltimore Fire Department, said in a press conference that two people had been recovered from the water.

One was uninjured, but the other was transported to a local trauma center in a "very serious condition."

Wallace said up to 20 people were thought to have fallen into the river and some six people were still missing.

Richard Worley, Baltimore's police chief, said there was "no indication" the collision was purposeful or an act of terrorism.

Wes Moore, the governor of Maryland, declared a state of emergency around 6 a.m. ET. He said his office was in close communication with Pete Buttigieg, the transportation secretary.

"We are working with an interagency team to quickly deploy federal resources from the Biden Administration," Moore added.

Understanding why the bridge collapsed could have implications for safety, in both the shipping and civil engineering sectors.

The container ship is the Singapore-flagged Dali, which is about 984 feet long, and 157 feet wide, per a listing on VesselFinder.

An unclassified Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency report said that the ship "lost propulsion" as it was leaving port, ABC News reported.

The crew notified officials that they had lost control and warned of a possible collision, the report said, per the outlet.

The Dali's owner is listed as Grace Ocean, a Singapore-based firm, and its manager is listed as Synergy Marine, which is also headquartered in Singapore.

Shipping news outlet TradeWinds reported that Grace Ocean confirmed the Dali was involved in the collapse, but is still determining what caused the crash.

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Staff for Grace Ocean declined to comment on the collision when contacted by Business Insider.

"All crew members, including the two pilots have been accounted for and there are no reports of any injuries. There has also been no pollution," Synergy Marine said in a statement.

The company did not respond to a request for further comment from BI.

'Horrified'

Maersk chartered the Dali, with a schedule for the ship on its website.

"We are horrified by what has happened in Baltimore, and our thoughts are with all of those affected," the Danish shipping company said in a statement.

Maersk added: "We are closely following the investigations conducted by authorities and Synergy, and we will do our utmost to keep our customers informed."

Per ship tracking data, the Dali left Baltimore on its way to Colombo, the capital of Sri Lanka, at around 1 a.m., about half an hour before the crash.

The Port of Baltimore is thought to be the largest in the US for roll-on/roll-off ships carrying trucks and trailers.

Barbara Rossi, associate professor of engineering science at the University of Oxford, told BI the force of the impact on one of the bridge's supporting structures "must have been immense" to lead to the collapse.

Dr Salvatore Mercogliano, a shipping analyst and maritime historian at Campbell University, told BI: "It appears Dali left the channel while outbound. She would have been under the control of the ship's master with a Chesapeake Bay pilot onboard to advise the master.

"The deviation out of the channel is probably due to a mechanical issue as the ship had just departed the port, but you cannot rule out human error as that was the cause of the Ever Forward in 2022 just outside of Baltimore."

He was referring to the incident two years ago when the container ship became grounded for a month in Chesapeake Bay after loading up cargo at the Port of Baltimore.

The US Coast Guard found the incident was caused by pilot error, cellphone use, and "inadequate bridge resource management."

Claudia Norrgren, from the maritime research firm Veson Nautical, told BI: "The industry bodies who are here to protect against incidents like this, such as the vessel's flag state, classification society, and regulatory bodies, will step in and conduct a formal investigation into the incident. Until then, it'll be very hard for anyone to truly know what happened on board."

This may not have been the first time the Dali hit a structure.

In 2016, maritime blogs such as Shipwreck Log and ship-tracking site VesselFinder posted videos of what appears to be the stern of the same, blue-hulled container vessel scraping against a quay in Antwerp.

A representative for the Port of Antwerp told BI the Dali did collide with a quay there eight years ago but couldn't "give any information about the cause of the accident."

The Dali is listed as being built in 2015 by Hyundai Heavy Industries in South Korea.

Watch: The shipwreck at the center of a battle between China and the Philippines

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