Audience retention

Retention shows how much of a video viewers watch, and where they leave.

An audience retention graph plots, for each moment of a video, the share of viewers still watching.

  1. Look at the first 30 seconds: a steep early drop often means the opening did not match the title or thumbnail.
  2. Look for plateaus: viewers are staying.
  3. Look for sudden dips: something changed (a long intro, a sponsor read, a slow section).
  4. Compare with another video of the same length and format, not with a very different one.

Sources