Returning viewers

YouTube Analytics splits your audience into new and returning under the Audience tab, based on whether a viewer watched any of your videos in a window before this one. Subscription has nothing to do with it, which is where most of the confusion starts. A returning viewer might have no subscription at all, and a subscriber who has been away for months counts as new when they come back. Read the split as a loyalty check. Rising returning viewers with flat new ones means you are serving the people you already have. A large new figure with few returning means videos travel while the channel holds nobody.