The right data can make all the difference for practically any business — but it’s something that is sometimes overlooked by content creators. Part of the discrepancy comes from the fact that while it is relatively easy for creators to gather their own data, it can be much more challenging to collect data related to others in their niche.

However, as Dan Butler, head of marketing at TubeBuddy, explains, it doesn’t have to be this way. His company’s platform, which focuses on helping YouTube creators optimize their videos and their channels, has developed an innovative approach that helps creators make better use of their data as part of their growth strategy.

In an era when millions of YouTube creators are competing for the same viewers, properly leveraging data can make all the difference in driving views and subscribers in a way that will actually generate meaningful income.

The scale of TubeBuddy’s impact is substantial. According to the company, over 14 million creators use their free Chrome extension, making it one of the largest optimization platforms in the creator economy. Internal data from nearly 60,000 creators shows that those who actively use TubeBuddy’s tools achieve 86% more views and 55% more subscribers over a three-month period.

“Group A in our data set used a TubeBuddy tool to completion at least 20 times in the period, and saw significantly higher growth on YouTube over the three-month period compared with group B,” Butler notes. “Systemic optimization creates measurable competitive advantages across a wide range of creator niches.”

Streamlining niche research with actionable data

In Butler’s view, getting quality data is one of the areas that is most difficult for YouTube creators. “Every niche has videos that outperform expectations, reach new audiences and play a significant role in growing creators’ channels, but actually finding the data that helps you understand why can be incredibly difficult and time-consuming,” he explains.

“It’s one thing to look at the biggest YouTubers, but it’s quite another to take a deep dive into your own niche, to see which creators are making an impact with your target audience so you can get more specific takeaways.”

To address this, the TubeBuddy’s Niche Insights tool is designed to give YouTube creators a detailed breakdown of content and creators that are exceeding expectations within their specific niche. “Based on your niche, our tool can identify the videos that deviate from channel baselines on YouTube, both positively and negatively,” Butler explains.

“Our tool identifies these videos for you, helping you focus your research on evaluating why these videos work, rather than just trying to find them in the first place. By digging deep into the biggest successes and failures of your niche and its specific creators, you can understand what does and doesn’t work with your audience. Our Topical Analysis tool takes this even further by helping you identify high-performing video topics before other creators. It helps you see which topics are currently winning, including topics that audiences in your niche like but don’t yet have a lot of content. Using these tools to identify the best formats, topics and even upload timing for your niche can make all the difference in helping you break through to reach a larger audience.”

The data in TubeBuddy’s niche leaderboard and niche insights tools is refreshed daily, making it easy to track what is currently succeeding with audiences. TubeBuddy users can even analyze their growth compared to target creators within their niche, getting more focused benchmarking insights. With these insights in hand, creators can be better equipped to understand what kind of content they should produce, as well as how to produce it.

Optimizing YouTube content with AI insights

In addition to data that can be used during the research phase, TubeBuddy also offers valuable data insights that help creators optimize their own video content — not by generating video, but by giving them information that will help them create better content.

TubeBuddy enables this through a variety of methods, largely backed by data-based AI applications. “One of our most basic opportunities for providing content-specific data insights is through A/B testing,” Butler says.

“Our A/B testing allows creators to test different thumbnails and metadata and then compare outcomes in key metrics like watch time, engagement, clickthrough rate and traffic source impact. This can offer much-needed clarity on which thumbnails and metadata give you the biggest boost with YouTube’s algorithms and with actual viewers. These insights can help you optimize your pre-existing videos and identify ways to improve future uploads.”

The company’s AI data-based AI applications become even more impactful through its Click Magnet tool, which is specifically designed to drive improved clickthrough rates. “Click Magnet offers several resources that can help boost your video performance,” Butler explains.

“Power Rankings helps you see your top-performing videos, while our Element Inspector breaks down every aspect of your video thumbnail, from your facial expression to overlays, to help identify which features resonate the best with your audience. CTR Opportunities helps you find videos with high watch time but low clickthrough rate so you can make targeted improvements to drive more clicks. We analyze your CTR, watch time, viewer response and other metrics so you can get the insights you need to drive better results.”

By leveraging AI to evaluate creator videos and provide information and suggestions in an easy to understand format, TubeBuddy makes it much simpler for content creators to make necessary adjustments to their videos, all while drawing on data from their own videos. Perhaps most importantly, this saves creators valuable time on back-end optimization, allowing them to focus more on content creation.

Turning data into growth

With the help of TubeBuddy’s data insights and AI-powered optimization suggestions, YouTube creators have a valuable tool in their arsenal to take their channels to new heights. By streamlining research and gaining a deeper understanding of what audiences in their niche want, creators can start taking action swiftly to improve their output and grow their following.

VentureBeat newsroom and editorial staff were not involved in the creation of this content.