Rene’s Top Five on YouTube: February 22, 2024 Edition

🛻 CEOs in a tiny truck getting cappuccino: Take one of the most popular streamers in the world, Ludwig, pair him with the head of YouTube, Neal, and what do you get? An almost hour long interview that touches on almost every aspect of Ludwig’s vision for his career and Neal’s vision of YouTube Shorts. A bakery. Live. NFTs. Retirement. Go watch the whole video on Lud’s channel! And once you’ve watched that, check out Neal’s reaction to ZHC custom-paining YouTube headquarters! (Fun fact: It’s the building I was in last time I visited HQ and I can 100% vouch for how brain-bogglingly terrific it turned out!) Also! MrBeast on the cover of Time. That’s right, a creator — ok, the most popular creator, but still a creator! It’s just another sign that when people are looking for entertainment these days, they’re increasingly looking to YouTube. Which might be why…

👀 Where the eyeballs are: And that might be why Nielsen crowned YouTube the #1 streaming platform in America for 12 months straight! Neal nailed it in his recent letter to the YouTube community: “When I started at YouTube, people thought about content from major studios and content from creators as entirely different. But today that stark divide is gone. Viewers want everything in one place, from a live sports game to the BBC to Khan Academy and NikkieTutorials. And they’re watching YouTube the way we used to sit down together for traditional TV shows – on the biggest screen in the home with friends and family.” And, yeah, get creators on that Emmy stage!

📺 Immerse yourself: It’s no secret YouTube is increasingly popular on television. The number of top creators pulling the majority of their watchtime from TV has increased more than 400% in the last 3 years and, around the world, people now watch more than1 b-as-in-billion hours on average of YouTube on their TVs every day. To match that level of immersion, YouTube has just made creator channel pages even more immersive! The feature is available to all creators already, and it’s rolling out to viewers starting now. You’re just going to want to make sure you update your channel’s banner art to make use of the full 16:9 aspect ratio, so you really fill out that big screen. (We’ve also got the details on some new top earning content analytics on Creator Insider and the new Posts feed on iOS and Android via YouTube Creators!)

🙋 Q&A: Is it even statistically possible to keep publishing videos without gaining many new subscribers: And yes, absolutely. On my personal channel, I pivoted topics, and I’ve been losing subscribers for over a year now. Also, some audiences, based on factors like topics and demographics, simply subscribe at lower rates. But here’s the thing — unless you’re really pushing to unlock features or get a play button award, subscribers aren’t something that should be high on creators anxiety list. Stats like unique viewers per month and new and returning viewers will give you a much better indicator of your channel’s current performance. If you really do want or need subs though, ask for them. Put a really strong call to action in your video, like Dream’s famous call-to-action (paraphrased) “70% of you watching this video right now haven’t subscribed, so please consider subscribing so we can build the biggest community on YouTube. It’s free, you can change your mind at any time!” (There may be a retention cost for a call-to-action that obtrusive, and an opportunity cost against other conversions, like sponsor, affiliate, or getting people to watch another one of your videos, which could be more valuable for growth over time)

📈 Tip of the Week: If you really want to focus on growing your channel and not just your subscriber count, check out the Audience tab in YouTube Analytics. Specifically, the “Videos growing your audience” and “What [other videos] your audience watches” sections, as well as the Research tab to see what other content the people who watch your videos are looking for but can’t find… yet. Then focus on making either more videos like those, or videos people would love to watch after watching those!

And get with the contenting!