YouTube Glossary

Watch time is the total number of minutes viewers have spent watching a video or channel. It's a core input into YouTube's recommendation system and the metric behind one of the two paths into full monetization: the 4,000-hour threshold for the YouTube Partner Program.

The YouTube Partner Program (YPP) is YouTube’s official monetization gateway, the only way a channel earns money directly from the platform. A channel with 1M subs that hasn’t been accepted into YPP earns $0 from YouTube, regardless of view count. Practically everything on the platform: ad revenue, memberships, Super Chat, Shopping, sits behind this one program.

CPM is, first and foremost, the advertiser’s number. It stands for Cost Per Mille, the amount advertisers pay YouTube per 1,000 ad impressions. A channel’s CPM doesn’t land in that creator’s account because the metric that actually reflects take-home earnings is RPM, and confusing the two is the single most common mistake creators make when reading their own Analytics.

RPM is the number that answers the question: “How much money am I getting paid on this channel?” as opposed to CPM, which answers: “How much are advertisers paying YouTube for placing ads on my videos?”