With YouTube creators seeing lower returns than normal due to the impacts of COVID-19, the platform has been working to provide more options to help YouTubers both understand their key metrics, and maximize their revenue potential.

And now, YouTube is also looking to refine its data presentation to provide more context for creators.

As per the above tweet, YouTube is adding a new RPM, or ‘Revenue Per Mille’, metric, which will make it easy to see how much a creator earns per 1,000 views of their videos. 

This is in addition to the existing CPM (Cost Per Mille) data, which shows how much advertisers are spending to show ads on YouTube clips, and other metrics on engagement and retention. YouTube has also recently added to these, with new insights on CTR and where your viewers have come from, along with a new, integrated channel performance chart in Creator Studio which displays, subscriber count, watch time and revenue performance in a single display.

The new, specific insight into how much money videos are generating for the creator will help to better contextualize their YouTube revenue performance, beyond estimated revenue stats. Some creators had expressed frustration at the lack of transparency in this respect – and as noted, with YouTube seeing ad rates decline due to lower overall ad sales during the pandemic, it’s working to alleviate any such issues to help keep creators engaged.

Indeed, according to a report from OneZero, advertising rates on YouTube have dropped by nearly 50% since the beginning of February, despite viewership increasing during the COVID-19 lockdowns.

As per OneZero:

“Data from the Interactive Advertising Bureau, an advertising industry body, suggests that one in four media buyers and brands have paused all advertising for the first half of 2020, and a further 46% have adjusted their spending downwards.”

That means less revenue for creators, with OneZero also reporting that most YouTubers are seeing CPM declines of between 30% and 50%.

The new RPM metric will help to better contextualize that impact on their subsequent payouts from the platform, which could help to reduce angst around earnings from their work.

It’s a difficult time for everyone, but it is good to see YouTube working to provide more tools to improve transparency, especially as tensions rise over how people will be able to keep going during the pandemic. YouTube can’t bring advertisers back to the platform, but by providing more tools to help creators track their data, it can help to improve understanding, and therefore enable those creators to refine their focus on the right data points.