https://imgur.com/a/hQI5R0f

I'm simplifying things but I've seen more than a couple people ask "how do I increase my CTR / Watch Time, etc." and while it's good that you're even looking at your metrics you kind of have to ignore them to a degree imo.

I've had upwards of 15% average CTR over a rolling 28 days and based on that alone I would have told you my titles and thumbnails must be excellent. It's only with a change to these thumbnails and titles did my impressions shoot up tremendously and I got significantly more views and watch time (average view duration nearly tripled in this time).

My analytics prior would have indicated (based on most common advice) my thumbnails and titles are solid but with below average view duration I should focus on making more attention grabbing (or at the very least longer) videos.

I instead made sizable changes to instead alter my thumbnails and titles to be even more clear on the topic I was covering and make my videos shorter (yes shorter) and more concise and it's resulted in both many more views and significantly better watch time and average view duration (albeit a "worse" CTR). I wouldn't even say my CTR got worse more so it "normalized" with a much larger sample size.

You've heard it a million times I'm sure but here's another reminder to not focus too much on the numbers and just go be creative. Focus on making better videos in whatever way that may be in your niche and eventually you will get more views. Obviously studying your analytics can help with that, but without experimenting and trying different types of videos the numbers start to lose meaning without context around it.

Don't use that as an excuse to just ignore your numbers completely though, obviously.