Plain English, please
The channel flipping glossary.
Analytics, acquisitions, and online-business terms... translated into words a normal person might actually use.
- Asset package
- The organized set of financials, analytics, SOPs, team details, rights information, and transition notes a buyer uses to understand the business.
- Average view duration (AVD)
- The average amount of time viewers spend watching a video. Read it beside average percentage viewed and the retention curve, not by itself.
- Brand Account
- A Google account structure that can allow multiple people to manage a YouTube channel with roles. Ownership transfer rules and waiting periods matter during acquisition.
- Content claim
- A rights holder’s assertion through YouTube’s systems that content matches protected material. A claim is not automatically a copyright strike, but it can affect monetization and risk.
- Copyright strike
- A formal copyright enforcement action against a channel. Strikes are materially different from routine claims and require careful diligence.
- CPM
- Cost per thousand ad impressions. This is advertiser-side pricing and is not the same as the amount a channel owner receives.
- CTR
- Click-through rate. On YouTube, it commonly describes the percentage of counted thumbnail impressions that turn into views.
- Escrow
- A neutral service or arrangement that holds funds until agreed deal conditions are met. The exact process depends on the marketplace and contract.
- Evergreen content
- Content designed to remain useful and discoverable beyond a short news cycle or trend window.
- Faceless channel
- A channel where the original owner’s face or personal identity is not the central product. Faceless does not mean automated, effortless, or automatically transferable.
- Multiple
- A shorthand relationship between an asset’s profit and its price. Always confirm whether a quoted multiple uses monthly or annual profit, and which profit definition is being used.
- Normalized profit
- Profit adjusted to reflect the real ongoing economics of the business, including necessary costs that a seller may have excluded or unusual costs that will not continue.
- Primary owner
- The highest ownership role on an eligible YouTube Brand Account. A manager or owner role is not the same as primary ownership.
- RPM
- Revenue per thousand views received by the creator after YouTube’s revenue share and across included revenue sources. It varies by audience, topic, format, season, and monetization mix.
- SOP
- Standard operating procedure. A written, repeatable process for completing a task such as research, scripting, editing, thumbnail review, publishing, or reporting.
- TTM
- Trailing twelve months. A rolling twelve-month period often used to show recent financial performance and reduce the distortion of one unusually strong month.
- Traffic concentration
- The degree to which views or revenue depend on one video, topic, source, geography, or other narrow factor. Higher concentration usually means higher risk.
- Viewer access
- A permission level that can let a prospective buyer inspect analytics without giving them control of the channel. Use the least privilege needed during diligence.
- Walk-away price
- The highest price a buyer is willing to pay, or lowest price a seller is willing to accept, based on the facts decided before negotiation pressure takes over.