Why compare a video to its own channel?
Raw views mostly tell you how big a channel is. A 50,000-view video is a flop on a channel that usually gets 500,000 and a breakout on one that usually gets 5,000.
Dividing views by the channel’s usual — the median of its recent uploads — takes size out of the picture. What’s left is the idea, the title and the thumbnail. That is the part you can learn from.
Why the median and not the average?
One viral video drags an average up and makes every other upload look like a flop. The median is the middle upload, so a single hit can’t move it much — it’s what the channel gets on a normal day.
What to do with an outlier
Look at what the outlier did differently from the channel’s other uploads: the topic, the angle in the title, the face and words on the thumbnail. When the same pattern wins on several channels in your niche, it’s a format worth trying — in your own voice.