YouTube is the World’s leading video publishing platform, as well as one of the largest search engines. For this reason, it makes sense to both market yourself on YouTube and track KPIs. With Google Data Studio, you can access the full array of dimensions and metrics to create a banging dashboard. Tracking channel metrics like views, comments, and subscribers is really easy. In addition to that, the YouTube API offer metrics on specific videos so you can quickly see which videos are making the the biggest impact in terms of driving views, likes, comments, subscribers, and more.
In this post, we’re going to review your options for connecting YouTube’s API with your Google Data Studio reports and dashboards.
Data Studio Connectors Which Integrate With YouTube
| Connector | Data Sources | Pricing | Read Review | Free Trial | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 Supermetrics | 35+ Data Sources | $39/Month | Read Review | Free Trial | facebook ads, google analytics, custom, adform, adobe analytics, adroll, amazon ads, bing ads, facebook insights, public data, google ads, adsense, my business, search console, google+, instagram insights, linkedin ads, mailchimp, company pages, pinterest, quora, reddit, search 360, semrush, stripe, tumblr, twitter, vimeo, yahoo, yandex metrica, youtube, criteo, outbrain, hubspot, snapchatads, verizon, taboola | @supermetrics |
 Power My Analytics | 25+ Data Sources | $9.95 Per Source | Read Review | Free Trial | facebook ads, adroll, amazon, bing, constant contact, criteo, ebay, insights, google my business, instagram ads, instagram insights, instagram media insights, linkedin ads, linkedin company analytics, listrak, mailchimp, paypal, pinterest, shareasale, tripadvisor, twitter, walmart, yahoo, snapchatads, perfectaudience, quickbooks, taboola, hubspot | @powermyanalytics |
 | 18+ Data Sources | Free | Read Review | Free | google analytics, file upload, bigquery, campaign manager, cloud spanner, cloud sql for mysql, display & video 360, extract data, google ad manager 360, google ads, google analytics, google cloud storage, google sheets, mysql, postgresql, search ads 360, search console, youtube analytics, tv attibution | |
 Funnel | 400+ Data Sources | $499/Month | Read Review | Demo Available | adobe analytics, adjust, salesforce, shopify, instagram ads, google ads, bing ads, doubleclick, facebook ads, linkedin, twitter, appnexus, criteo, mediamath, snapchat, tradedoubler, yahoo, adform, adroll, appsflyer, google analytics, has offers, perfect audience, performant, ebay, google search console, impact radius, listrak, mailchimp, outbrain, peperjam, propel media, quora, reddit, taboola, yandex, pinterest | @funnel |
 Tapclicks | 16+ Data Sources | Custom Solutions | Read Review | None Currently | facebook ads, | @tapclicks |
Choosing the Best YouTube Connector
As will almost all Google products, YouTube can be connected to Google Data Studio using both free connectors and paid connectors. There are features and benefits of each so consider these things when choosing.
- Roll-Up YouTube Accounts: If you are simply connecting to a single YouTube account in your dashboard, the free Google version is almost always the best way to go. Google offers a very stable data studio connector for this. However, if you need to connect to multiple YouTube accounts in roll-up view, you’ll need to use a 3rd party connector to do so. This is common if you’re reporting on multiple web properties at once and want to group them all in terms of reporting.
- Data Control Feature: You may be aware of GDS’s (Google Data Studio’s) data control feature. This is a great feature which let’s you create a report template and then allow the user to access their own YouTube accounts via your template with access only to their own data. If this feature is something you need, you’ll need to use Google’s free connector as data controls don’t currently work with 3rd party connectors.
- Direct Connection vs Data Warehousing: With some connectors, you connect directly to the YouTube API in real time. This means that you’ll pull data from YouTube each time your report loads. With others (typically paid connectors), the connector itself will warehouse your data. This is done sometimes to improve performance and to ensure a more stable data connection. For YouTube, we don’t see a benefit or problem specific to data warehousing as the YouTube API is fast and also allows for historical data views so no need to store the data yourself.
Final Thoughts
Looking for a fast, free solution? Go with Google’s free YouTube Connector for Data Studio. Need to blend data or connect to multiple accounts at once, paid connectors like Supermetrics are the way to go as you can easily connect to 1-100s of accounts at a time for great roll-up reporting.
Related Resources
- Learn more about Google Data Studio Connectors
- Supermetrics (free/paid depending on your needs)
- YouTube
- Free Data Studio Templates