This week on YouTube, August 22, 2024
Aug 22, 2024 – [[read-time]] minute read
Greetings and salutations! I’m at YouTube HQ this week recording hot fresh episodes of Release Notes and the Creator Insider Podcast, so I’ll keep the intro quick and hopefully high-retention: You are YouTube viewers and creators. I am the YouTube Liaison. This is where we all come together to talk about what’s happening on and about the platform. Let’s go!
🧪 Science! There’s a terrific profile in the New York Times this week about a terrific creator — NileRed. If you’re not familiar with Nigel, he makes 45-minute long lofi chemistry videos about molecularly transforming cotton balls into cotton candy or plastic gloves into hot sauce, and tens of millions of people go with him on the ride. If you ever worry you need weekly uploads of high-volume, high-retention, stunts to make it on YouTube, Nigel is just one example of how monthly — even less than monthly — super chill, super long, but super interesting content can just crush as well. And it’s one of my absolute favorite things about YouTube!
🤷 What really impacts the YouTube recommendation system? As creators, we can’t help but wonder if everything from the file name of our uploads to the category, tags, and #hashtags we choose have an effect on our video performance… or not! It’s super simple, basic stuff, but that’s what makes it so foundational to creator concern and even superstition. So, I teamed up with Todd Beaupré, YouTube’s Senior Director of Growth and Discovery, to get quick answers to exactly those kinds of questions! As you might suspect, things like title and description are the metadata that matters the most, but you can hear all of it straight from Todd on YouTube, Instagram, or TikTok.
📺 Video answers. Speaking of which, we’re also working on a new series where I — and potentially others here at YouTube! — answer your questions from social with video replies posted right back on social! I’m still doing quick text replies but sometimes a video reply offers more context and lives longer in the discovery systems, so I wanted to try it out and see how it worked. Let me know your questions and your thoughts on the format via comments on the YouTube, Instagram, or TikTok videos above, or on Twitter/X or Threads where they’re also being posted!
🙋Question of the week: “How can I see my analytics for TV?” I’ve been getting this question a lot, especially since creators have been talking about how fast YouTube has been growing on TV. And yeah, it can be a little tricky to find. You want to go to YouTube Studio on the web (even if you’re on your phone, skip the mobile app and pull up the website). Then you want to go to Analytics > Advanced Analytics > Device Type and look for TV. Don’t just look at the views either, look at the watch time. On TV, especially for longer videos, live streams, and podcasts, people can hit play and then start working out, doing house work, cooking, leaning back to watch with friends and family, assembling a puzzle or model — all sorts of things! Point being, the watch time on TV can be disproportionately long for the views, so check both and then see if it makes sense to start thinking bigger about the big screen!
📈 Tip of the Week: One of the things I loved most about VidCon this year was the huge YouTube poster reading — Where your passion pays off. I still remember so vividly when I left my old job in tech media and started my own personal YouTube channel. I had no idea if it would work or what would happen next. But within a year I was earning as much as I did my best year in my former job. Twice as much by year three. Which is why, when creators get into the YouTube Partner Program (YPP) and ask me about staying true to their creative vision even as they contemplate making money, I think of YouTube as the one place where those two things can really be in harmony. We have to make choices, of course, just like any artist. Do we want maximum freedom of expression or ad-friendly videos that get maximum revenue share? Do we want a sponsor segment if maybe some viewers drop off when they see it? Is a membership or live stream with fan funding really worth the extra time and work? But they’re our choices. We hit the upload button, we check the boxes. And that’s where all the different YPP options really come in clutch. If your topic doesn’t get the best ad rates, you can lean into sponsors and shopping affiliates as well. If you think you’re too edgy for those, you can lean into fan funding so your audience can support you directly instead. We get to decide what works best for us! That’s what helped me and so many creators have the lives we have now. It’s exactly that poster — we get to focus on our passion, and YPP gives us a bunch of different tools and options to help it pay off.