YouTube Growth Reality Check  🔗 **Source:** [YouTube Growth Reality Check](https://share.snipd.com/episode/b2322dd0-2174-43ce-8dd6-5eee4fecd3c0) ## Highlights - **Carve Time With Sensible Sacrifices** - Make sensible sacrifices to free time for YouTube by swapping low-value activities like extra gaming or TV for creation sessions. - Batch record on weekends and use short daily windows (even 35s for a Short) to keep momentum when working full-time. Transcript: Travis Actually stay consistent when the channel isn't the thing paying the bills yet? Every growth tip assumes you've got all day to make videos and most of us just don't. And I'm so glad that this was brought up because as someone who has done this myself, like literally had a full-time job, you have to make decisions for yourself. Like how bad do you want this? But you also can make decisions on your day like how to cut your day up into something that works now we both uh rob and i were content creators before we got to vid iq um rob how did you do it Rob Wilson When you were first starting out but way back in the day yeah this question comes up a lot and i feel as if we all do understand that creator dilemma. And it is a bit of a tough love, hard truth moment. But the way I try and pitch this is what necessary sacrifices are you willing to make to your daily life right now? And that could be instead of watching Netflix for an hour in the morning, or let's say you're a big video gamer and you like to play video games a few hours a week. Are you willing to let this, I guess, new passion, this new creativity start to replace those parts of your life that, you know, can be sacrificed. We understand that the job and the family always takes precedence, but with the time that you have left, how are you able to allocate more of it to the YouTube endeavor if you are serious About it? And, you know, I think for me, Travis, I did, I think, sacrifice, whether it was playing games or maybe once a week going out and playing football with my friends. I was just so engrossed in this YouTube thing that I wanted to dedicate more time to it. ([Time 0:02:42](https://share.snipd.com/snip/518e46b5-2554-43e1-b5d3-09456dfde1ba)) - **Travis's Early Hustle Between Lunch Breaks** - Travis admitted he filmed and edited around a corporate job, watching growth videos on lunch breaks and sacrificing social time to build momentum. - He even called in sick occasionally to shoot, illustrating extreme personal trade-offs he used to accelerate growth. Transcript: Travis Think some of mine weren't sensible but i made the sacrifices so for example you know i worked in uh i worked at uh in a corporate job for years and during my lunch breaks i would watch uh Youtube growth live streams uh like vidiq and roberto blake and stuff like that and when I got home immediately when I got home while I'm eating dinner I'm watching youtube growth videos And then trying to figure out how to shoot things then on the weekend I'm shooting things and editing there's uh you can batch record things so there's there's times during the week when You can maybe set aside an hour or so hopefully for most people and that's when you try to get everything done um that can be stressful but a lot of people do that the reality is you just have To make decisions just like rob said um you whether you're you know working 10 hours a day or whatever there is time somewhere to do something whether it be learning thinking about the Next thing you're going to do quickly record something quickly edit something there's usually time for something. If you literally don't have any time, then you're probably not going to do YouTube. I mean, it's just, you need some sort of time. There needs to be time, but for YouTube shorts, you may need 35 seconds. So again, there's usually time for something. It just depends on what your priorities are. Now, if you have a family and a full-time job, you can't make those sacrifices. I get it. ([Time 0:04:50](https://share.snipd.com/snip/ddb4b4c4-3763-48da-944c-8090cdc85dce)) - **Why Travel Channels Get Geo-Jailed** - Travel channels get 'geo jailed' because recommendations target viewers of past region-specific videos, not the creator's current location. - Successful travel creators solve this by making the creator and perspective the draw, or by starting a new channel when audiences are non-transferable. Transcript: Travis And cream that's an interesting name uh how do travel creators break out of an algorithmic geo jail we got 5 000 watch hours in malaysia but now we are filming in japan and korea and our Views are tanking because youtube still pushes our videos out to a 90% Malaysian audience how do we force a global reset so the thing is my assumption again I don't know this I don't have This channel in front of me or anything but a lot of times when I see this it's because the content you made is about the region not necessarily that you were in the region it's I think people Get confused with what's happening so there are several creators and some that i've interviewed here on this podcast that uh live overseas they don't live in america but their primary Audience is in america so there's nothing about like a geo reset it's that the content they're doing is is something that's applicable to people who are in america or wherever i'm guessing Since you're a travel creator you did content about malaysia well okay and the way the youtube algorithm works is it's going to show uh once someone watches like a video let's say someone Watched um you know a video about a malaysian meal or something that you had the next time you upload a video it's naturally going to get shown to that malaysian audience and if they don't Like now maybe you're in japan or something and it's like i don't really want to watch a video about japan because i'm in malaysia it's going to tank that artificially travel creators Have this problem that like that's a thing and most successful travel creators the way that they've overcome that is that they the people come to watch them in that environment less So about the environment and them having to being in it like what what are your thoughts about this i was trying to find the video where we did a case study on this a couple of years ago with Rob Wilson A couple who had a travel channel, which was, I think, specifically in Valencia, Spain. And they had a really good audience there. But then they moved to, I think, Seoul, Korea. And the view counts absolutely tanked because the videos about Valencia in Spain were for a specific audience who were potentially retiring in that area. But then when they were doing something a little more adventurous in a completely different part of the world, it completely disconnected the audience. So what they had to do is they had to start a brand new channel to spin up a new audience for that viewership. And it was a really tough decision, but it turned out to be a good decision for them. I think they very quickly got up to like 10,000 subscribers and some videos with 100,000 views. By that time they had the knowledge and the skills and they knew how to speak to whatever audience they needed to speak to but it required that really tough decision of starting a new channel And I'm not saying that that is what you have to do but it feels like for that particular niche it's that that was the only solution in order for them to decouple from that existing audience, Which is almost like an anchor. It was a non-transferable audience, unfortunately. So I'm just giving you the case study, the story. Like it's always really tough, isn't it, to suggest to a creator, yeah, you need a new channel. But the experience from elsewhere seems to suggest that that might be the route they need to go down. Travis Yeah, I think in a lot of ways, this is the unfortunate reality of the way that the recommendation system works. It works very well, and it works in the way that it should work but because of the way it works again showing content to create to viewers who have already watched your your content and When you switch content types and this happens to every type of channel not even geo-based like for example if i'm a gaming channel all of a sudden i start doing cooking videos it's the Same idea it's like all my videos are going to be shown to the people who are watching the gaming videos now i'm cooking they're not as interested it's the same exact situation it has less To do with i know it seems like when you look at analytics oh they're just being shown in malaysia well yeah because all of your previous videos were malaysian and then about that that Particular topic that those people were interested in but again case in point there are several creators i watch that are based in like the uk and their audience primarily in japan is American and uh it's because the content they do is interesting to that that that area so one way to kind of that i know some content creators that travel make it interesting is they they Um they leverage the fact that they are a uh person in that country that is a visitor so like an american tries vietnamese food for the first time so that way you're kind of you're kind of Hinging on people who maybe even american like oh that's cool they went to vietnam and so i'm watching from america to see what that experience is like if you are if your videos and of course We can't see your videos we're just assuming some things are like the six best places to see in malaysia or something like that uh for people who travel that might be good but for the most Part there are going to be people who might be already living in Malaysia, watching that video. So it's a tricky thing. There's no easy answer to this. Obviously, if it was the easy answer, you would have already figured it out. But sometimes the correct answer is not the easy answer. It's just the answer. ([Time 0:07:10](https://share.snipd.com/snip/4ff785f6-c717-4fa8-a96c-3419dcd7d1fd)) - **Start A New Channel To Reset Audience** - If your audience doesn't transfer after moving, consider launching a new channel to reach a fresh relevant audience. - Case study: creators who moved from Valencia to Seoul restarted and quickly gained traction with new content tailored to the new locale. Transcript: Rob Wilson Was trying to find the video where we did a case study on this a couple of years ago with a couple who had a travel channel, which was, I think, specifically in Valencia, Spain. And they had a really good audience there. But then they moved to, I think, Seoul, Korea. And the view counts absolutely tanked because the videos about Valencia in Spain were for a specific audience who were potentially retiring in that area. But then when they were doing something a little more adventurous in a completely different part of the world, it completely disconnected the audience. So what they had to do is they had to start a brand new channel to spin up a new audience for that viewership. And it was a really tough decision, but it turned out to be a good decision for them. I think they very quickly got up to like 10,000 subscribers and some videos with 100,000 views. By that time they had the knowledge and the skills and they knew how to speak to whatever audience they needed to speak to but it required that really tough decision of starting a new channel And I'm not saying that that is what you have to do but it feels like for that particular niche it's that that was the only solution in order for them to decouple from that existing audience, Which is almost like an anchor. It was a non-transferable audience, unfortunately. ([Time 0:08:41](https://share.snipd.com/snip/6089e9be-db4a-40d2-834c-371988638307)) - **Shorts Need Scale And Repeat Virality** - Shorts monetization demands far larger, repeat-viral view counts compared with long-form where modest views and diverse income streams compound. - Gaming Shorts are especially low-RPM, so even millions of Short views may yield only small AdSense revenue. Transcript: Travis Next one's from uh chevron says uh does monetization with shorts even matter anymore i'm a shorts channel that posts gaming content and no matter how hard i try it seems i can't get 10 Million views so is it time to throw away shorts and focus on long form you know what's interesting about this is i've now interviewed a lot of content creators on this channel that do Shorts and make a lot of money. It is a little surprising. So the video that just went out, depending on when you see this just a couple of weeks ago, which is now our most viewed video on the podcast channel is from a content creator and kind of Entrepreneurial guy who makes a lot of money on shorts and um you know that's just uh there is money to be made what's interesting is he says gaming shorts so gaming as as a plat as a topic And niche anyway is already low uh performing for an rpm cpm uh perspective like how much money gets paid then you put shorts on top of it it's like oh my gosh like how many shorts views you Need to get anything out of that for a gaming short um ultimately you do need a lot of views and what's interesting about all of these content creators that talk about you know how much Money they're making with shorts is the one thing they don't really mention is that they have to go viral every time it's not just that they're making videos like a content creator for Long form does not have to go viral to make money. They can make pretty good money in a lot of different ways, whether it be affiliate sales, or just, you know, aggregate of just throwing a bunch of videos up that over time get a lot of views. And a lot of views can be like 20 30,000. Whereas if you want to make some type of living on shorts, you got to make millions upon millions of views. And almost every video has to get minimum hundreds of 1000s not millions of views it's interesting i i agree with the sentiment that it does feel incredibly daunting to get money ties With shots they're not money ties right travis so we're saying that they're well it doesn't say whether or not they are they say i'm trying to i can't get 10 million views so i assume that's Rob Wilson The so so 10 million views in 90 days and it almost seems to be like it's binary in that it's almost literally impossible or oh yeah i was able to do this pretty easily like with just a couple Of viral um shots whereas with long form content because you have a lot more time and it's a gradual buildup of momentum of your channel, it feels more digestible and it feels like a more Realistic target. So I think it's, yeah, I think there are extremes of opinions when it comes to monetization of shorts. And then once you do monetize your shorts, even if you are getting 10 million views a month or 3 million views, because that's what you'd need to monetize, you're probably still looking At maybe 100, 150 bucks per month. So that's not necessarily sustainable. And yeah, Travis, we've now spoken to quite a few people in the short space who are booking this perceived trend of there's no way to make money. Tim Daniloff being another one. But they feel as if they're more like serial entrepreneurs, like building businesses and quote unquote systems around how to make content, not necessarily deeply involved in making The content themselves. I guess what I can say is that, and this applies to long form creators as well, if you're just looking to build your channel, your business, your financial stability around about AdSense, Then you've got this game completely wrong, because it is so volatile youtube controls all of the switches when it comes to adsense what other opportunities are there and yeah there Are less opportunities in shorts because you can't add links to or not yet i think they are reintroducing clickable links soon to Shorts for branded stuff. But there is also the shopping tool element as well, which I think is becoming more and more prevalent on that side of the YouTube space and platform. But again, you need to be monetized. So I don't know what conclusion I'm coming to here, to be honest, other than, yeah, shorts is tough. It is really tough. And even if you do get monetized, you might not be happy with the financial results. ([Time 0:12:52](https://share.snipd.com/snip/0b94538d-e9e5-4278-868e-4b1b208898b8)) - **Build Income Beyond AdSense** - Don't rely solely on AdSense; diversify with sponsors, products, and systems because YouTube ad revenue is volatile. - Many profitable Shorts operators act as business people running systems, not traditional creators making every asset themselves. Transcript: Rob Wilson Sentiment that it does feel incredibly daunting to get money ties with shots they're not money ties right travis so we're saying that they're well it doesn't say whether or not they Are they say i'm trying to i can't get 10 million views so i assume that's the so so 10 million views in 90 days and it almost seems to be like it's binary in that it's almost literally impossible Or oh yeah i was able to do this pretty easily like with just a couple of viral um shots whereas with long form content because you have a lot more time and it's a gradual buildup of momentum Of your channel, it feels more digestible and it feels like a more realistic target. So I think it's, yeah, I think there are extremes of opinions when it comes to monetization of shorts. And then once you do monetize your shorts, even if you are getting 10 million views a month or 3 million views, because that's what you'd need to monetize, you're probably still looking At maybe 100, 150 bucks per month. So that's not necessarily sustainable. And yeah, Travis, we've now spoken to quite a few people in the short space who are booking this perceived trend of there's no way to make money. Tim Daniloff being another one. But they feel as if they're more like serial entrepreneurs, like building businesses and quote unquote systems around how to make content, not necessarily deeply involved in making The content themselves. I guess what I can say is that, and this applies to long form creators as well, if you're just looking to build your channel, your business, your financial stability around about AdSense, Then you've got this game completely wrong, because it is so volatile youtube controls all of the switches when it comes to adsense what other opportunities are there and yeah there Are less opportunities in shorts because you can't add links to or not yet i think they are reintroducing clickable links soon to Shorts for branded stuff. But there is also the shopping tool element as well, which I think is becoming more and more prevalent on that side of the YouTube space and platform. But again, you need to be monetized. So I don't know what conclusion I'm coming to here, to be honest, other than, yeah, shorts is tough. It is really tough. And even if you do get monetized, you might not be happy with the financial results. And ([Time 0:14:30](https://share.snipd.com/snip/e203947f-0357-42e0-bf02-3b7dcddae7e0)) - **Make Video Essays Stand Out With One Superpower** - For video essays pick one superpower: research depth, storytelling, or format innovation, then attack big topics with strong hooks. - Obsess over the first 30 seconds; top essay creators spend most editing time on the intro to secure retention. Transcript: Travis There are already some big, well-known video essay channels out there. For a new channel, what makes one stand out? Is it better looking videos, picking a tighter topic, or having a strong personal take? And how can I tell which one is working for me it's a great question and there are a lot of big video essay channels I've actually interviewed several of them here on the podcast and you Know all of them have unique takes about what it is they're covering and a lot of them are artists in the truest sense like they really look at things in this very specific way that makes Them interesting for example um one of the people that i talked to dodford um he does he does these really interesting video essays where the person in them is actually kind of narrating Their own documentary but he does that by taking out interviews from different interviews and making this cohesive story throughout it's incredible the way he does this now that's Unique that's a unique take on something like this what would you do if you were doing this right yeah so when i was looking at the actual tweet i was just thinking yep all of them you need Rob Wilson To do all of that and I would agree with you, Travis, in the aspect of video essays now are not a unique format on the platform, which means that you have to bring something new or fresh or Bigger or better. Like it's almost picking out one of those bullet points that you've talked about and saying, right, this is where my superpower is. I know that I can be the better storyteller than anyone else, or I can do more research than anybody else, or I can have this quirky approach to it. You know, like Dodford does this, but I think I can approach it in this way, which is completely different. I think that's what's going to make you stand out. And if you can find that fresh new formats, then that does allow you to broach topics that have already been covered, but just in your unique way, or it's finding those topics that haven't Been covered yet on YouTube where you can sense there's an opportunity. So it's like weighing up, is it topic or format where you can excel and choose one? And I think also, you know, disagree with me if you want, Travis, but I feel as if something like video essay content requires a certain amount of trust in the creator and or social proof, Which means that for smaller creators, it can be a bit of a tougher nut to crack. Yeah. Travis I think the best way to start out is to look for the biggest topic, the biggest subject of the video. You're looking for a total addressable market. In other words, the most amount of potential viewership for the video. Attack that in any way possible. Go out there and research. Other videos have been made about that topic because there probably has been a couple. See what works. Read the comment section. See what people are connecting with and try to double down and make your version better than that. ([Time 0:17:36](https://share.snipd.com/snip/a2387b0c-6eed-42df-a9d5-9c68b7eb17c8)) - **Audit And Unlist Misleading Legacy Videos** - Audit older content: unlist legacy videos that attract the wrong audience so recommendations stop sending uninterested viewers to new uploads. - Use analytics to identify which evergreen videos are mismatched to current content before unlisting. Transcript: Travis I with several years of content. Oh, we see these on the live streams all the time. What do we tell them? Rob Wilson So I guess what we need to establish is where's the channel at now? Is it chugging along nicely and you feel as if you're trapped? Or is it a channel that just doesn't have any traction at all? And you're in that situation where you've tried the same thing 100 times and expected something different to happen. If it's the latter, then I think you should just start a new channel. Because if you've got no momentum on that current channel, let's just give not only the channel a fresh perspective, It might be so freeing as a creator to say, oh, this is just something New and I can create as if there are no restrictions. There's no expectation from the audience. I can just do something that means something to me again. However, if your channel is already monetized and you do have a certain number of views coming in and it's keeping your channel going nicely, then maybe you need to go into research mode A little bit. Check out what the competition is doing these days, because I guarantee you in the last two or three years, your niche has probably changed quite significantly just because of all of The influx of ai technology and channels that are hunting for opportunities in your space and it may be that yeah you're being slowly burned off because of that composition but it's Travis A tough one to answer because you know every channel is different and we can't see the channel but a lot of times when i see this it's a channel they say with lots of years of content that Could also mean they changed content styles over the course of years like they might have been one channel at the beginning and and something completely different now that doesn't Match with like the majority of their content it's it's hard to know it's just been whenever i've seen people ask this question and you go to their channel like they don't do any of the Things that we talk about um they're know, the titles are maybe not necessarily the best. Thumbnails are definitely not the best. Topics tend to be all over the place. And you just have to understand that, like, if you want people to continue to come, you need to give them a reason to come back. And if you are all over the place, then your views are going to be all over the place. I don't know that that's the case here with Princess Faron, but I just saying normally when we see this this is what we see so definitely take a look at your content and one one thing you Can do um i don't often tell people to do this and i never tell people to do this blind but you know i'm just going to give you advice and you can do with it what you will look at your content That's uh older actually look at your your analytics and see what views um on your what videos on your channel are still bringing in views. If those videos topically have nothing to do with what you're doing now, you might want to unlist them. You might want to unlist. I'm not saying delete them. I'm not even saying private. Just unlist them. Because what you're doing is the channel is sending out content to a viewership that probably doesn't want to watch your new stuff. So when you put out new stuff, the CTR is getting crushed because those people aren't interested in that topic. If you see that, that's where you can start to help yourself stop getting uh recommendations by videos you did five years ago that you don't like that topic anymore i see that all the time It's not helping your channel it's actually kind of tanking your channel so sometimes you have to take a little analytical look that's the same dilemma as a travel channel to some extent Isn't it it is it's just a different way of looking at it, but the same exact problem. ([Time 0:22:43](https://share.snipd.com/snip/53866eaf-5256-42e5-9c55-3028cdbfb764)) - **Vlog Growth Comes From Familiar Packaging** - Vlogs succeed through familiarity and consistent packaging rather than strict conventions; thumbnails and titles form a recognizable brand. - Casey Neistat treats each vlog as a movie with cinematic storytelling, which builds trust and expectation. Transcript: Travis Hmm. That's an interesting one. So I guess for me, I'm not a huge lifestyle vlog watcher however um you could argue like first of all what does lifestyle mean like it can mean a lot of different things i tend to think fashion And stuff but really if you look at the word itself someone's lifestyle i could argue in some ways that casey neistat does that he's a vlogger you could say he doesn't do life i could argue That he does do lifestyle stuff because we get to see his life we get to see what he does in his life and it's just he just packages everything as a movie you'll notice when he talks about His videos he calls them movies you ever notice that and he i think he takes a really interesting artistic approach to every video being uh a one of one. Like this is, this is its own thing. They don't necessarily connect to anything else. And he just puts everything he can into that one. Every video seems to be just a masterpiece of storytelling, no matter what type of content you make. Storytelling is key. If you had to do a lifestyle vlog there, Rob, how would you, how would you package them oh my goodness if i was gonna do one blimey you see you see i'm stumped this is this is where i i'm kind Rob Wilson Of like just this blank canvas of blandness my life's boring i know i just i don't leave the house hardly at all and yeah i up, I make videos, I take the dog for a walk, and then I play on whatever Game I'm playing on at the end. Yeah, yeah. Like and subscribe. There we are. That was my vlog. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Going back to the sort of genuine, the original question, the two words that came into my head were familiarity and consistency and you know thinking of the Casey Neistat context you Know it's a Casey Neistat video from the packaging because of like primal branding his glasses for one thing and he's typically in a in a state of movement or emotion or action in the thumbnail. And then the title is kind of somewhat cryptic, but it's starting to, it opens a curiosity loop or it presents a question and so on and so forth. And those are all of the things that I think lead into the masterclass of vlogging, but not necessarily every creator is in that space. The other thing I notice around vlogging is that they tend to defy the standard YouTube conventions, especially when you look at the thumbnails. And again, stereotyping a little bit, but when you look at female vloggers and shopping hauls, you'll have quite complicated thumbnails and with font and text, it's really difficult To read. And, you know, typically we might criticize that. But then when you match it up against the rest of the niche it all kind of falls into that same style because again i think there's that familiarity and it creates a a warm sense of trust For the average viewer of that content so i i i don't know if i'm giving you any specific advice here i'm just giving you thoughts and flavors of the vlogging area. And I think the other thing as well is I don't think you necessarily need social proof with vlogging. ([Time 0:26:21](https://share.snipd.com/snip/e9a5fca3-d124-4c0d-ae8d-e9f3bc9ec892)) - **Use AI To Speed Up Repetitive Tasks** - Don't fear AI — use it for time-consuming tasks like research, thumbnails, titling, and simple visuals to speed your workflow. - Blend human judgment with AI outputs: double-check AI research and tweak generated thumbnails or b-roll for trustworthiness. Transcript: Travis Does, does YouTube basically start from fresh with at least new video algorithmically? That's not really how it works. Um, but it's a good question because you know, what I found Rob is that a lot of times we see something happen and then we try to figure out why it got there and we come up with a rational explanation And then it becomes fact that happens all the time well if I change if I put the metadata in the file of my video and upload it that way it's going to get more views because this one time I did That and I got a ton of views so it's got to be what it is. And it just doesn't work that way. A lot of the time, what, what is your best way of explaining this? And I'll, I'll try to throw in some spice at the end. Rob Wilson I think we have to try and respect YouTube's argument that you replace the word algorithm with audience. And if you just bring up the question again, I just want to confirm what they said right at the beginning of this. Because they're saying that, so if a topic gets flooded with AI slot videos that nobody watches. Well, when I see that, if nobody's watching those videos, then that should mean that YouTube's not actually distributing any of that content anyway. They should have virtually no impressions. So it shouldn't be something that you need to concern yourself with. But going back to a point of replacing algorithm with audience, there may be some AI videos are not actually slop and they're actually good pieces of content for the audience that's Watching them. And so you do have to appreciate that, you know, not every single piece of AI content is actually slop. There is arguments for some videos that are out there. I saw a channel recently where what they've done is they've blended, they've turned themselves into an AI avatar. So it looks like the creator, but then it allowed them to explore these AI landscapes and worlds. And they were talking about how, what's the Red Sox stadium? Fenway Park. So what they'd done is they'd transported themselves into the building of the stadium. And it was kind of like a cool idea of blending the human, the creator, with this technology, which allowed them to place them in that scene where you might see it on documentaries from 10, 15 years ago, but it would take an entire animation team to put that together. They're able to now do that in a matter of prompts, but it's believable and it's entertaining for the viewer. So I know I've gone on a bit of a long defense of AI content there, but let's try and assume that if it is AI slop and it doesn't get any views, then that's not what you have to worry about. It is the talented creators who are embracing AI and turn it into content that the audience does want to watch. ([Time 0:31:48](https://share.snipd.com/snip/58b4efda-a272-4a1c-810b-74cdcd0c8b14)) - **Hosts' Own Use Of AI For Thumbnails And B-roll** - Travis and Rob both use AI for thumbnail generation, B-roll, and quick animations to save editing time. - Travis uses vidIQ AI Coach to turn transcripts into animated charts and six-second b-roll clips for faster production. Transcript: Rob Wilson Quite a lot with your little, sorry, that sounds so patronizing, your grand 100,000 subscriber plus channel, Travis. You've basically handed off all of your thumbnail generation to AI. Yeah, I've never been that good at thumbnail stuff, to be honest. Travis And so it's a nice thing to be able to take off my plate. And other aspects of it a lot of research i i do now do through ai to try to figure out things and uh because it takes a lot of time and i'm here at vidiq doing all these podcasts i don't really Have a lot of time to do my own personal stuff so i need to cut time down uh so i'll have um you know ai do a lot of research double check it and then i'll triple check it and then uh yeah and i'll Rob Wilson You know take it from there yeah and you were showing me yesterday that you just playing about with the ai coach saying hey watch watch this video can you turn these into some simple animations Yeah and it was doing it and i've been doing it as well with um claude a little bit yeah um with a um a video about copyright with you know the paul quinn that we spoke to a couple of months ago. And I just think, yeah, this is good information, but I feel as if it needs to be visualized. But if I hand this off to an editor, it's going to take days. And I just need something, I'm not going to say quick and dirty, but just something quick and simple that allows me to continue with the production process. And I was pleasantly surprised with the output. It's not amazing, but it was better than just talking head. So even us Neanderthals who've been on YouTube for decades are accepting that AI is a part of the creative process. Travis If you're new here, you should check out the link in the description for an option to use the vidIQ um tool AI coach is interesting because you can now go in there and ask it to make b-roll For your video which is crazy good um it'll make like little six second clips for you that look really good what you do is if you have a script which by the way like if you've already if you Don't like use script for scripts for your videos, record the video. You can get the transcript from your your content. Then you can upload that to our coach and then ask it to make B-roll where it makes sense. And in the case of what Rob's talking about, I had to do the same thing. ([Time 0:36:00](https://share.snipd.com/snip/4b94bd1f-6740-4e9e-8a18-e060fa7cbed5)) - **Trust YouTube For Mid-Roll Placement Or A/B Test** - Let YouTube auto-place mid-rolls unless you want to A/B test manual placements because YouTube has vast data on viewer ad tolerance. - If you test, compare similar evergreen videos with manual mid-rolls to measure revenue gain versus retention hit. Transcript: Travis However, I have also talked to a lot of content creators, especially ones that do like ultra long form, like videos that are 20, 30, 40, an hour long, and they will put it in every like minute, 45 seconds. Now that doesn't mean that a viewer gets all of those ads it just means that the potential for those ads can happen at that point youtube will not put an ad every 45 seconds in your video But it will put them in there knowing you know what the viewer will tolerate before they click off what what's the practice that we use here at vidIQ uh rob and what do you think uh what you Know? Rob Wilson We've always left it to YouTube to decide for us. I think basically because the AdSense on the vidIQ channel doesn't directly go to any of us. So it's like, hey, whatever. We'll let the ads do what the ads do. But even on my own channel, I don't think I have a mental headspace to try and place the ads, the specific parts in the videos. I'm trying to remember, there was a bit of a hoo-ha about this, either last year or the year before, where YouTube removed some of the controls around ad placement, but I'm trying to remember What it was now. You can still manually place ads, but something changed, and I don't know what it was. Travis I can't remember either. Vaguely sounds familiar, but I mean, I know you can place them wherever you want at this point. I think it was something that they were automatically doing. If I remember correctly, they were automatically putting some type of ad somewhere. So I know it's bad that we can't remember this, but YouTube makes so many changes that it's like, what did they do this past week? But by and large, they'd let you put ads wherever you want to in a video. You can put in mid-roll ads, which means videos somewhere in the middle of the video when your video is eight minutes or longer. That's kind of the question here. I don't think you're going to lose out on any money if you let youtube do it yourself let let youtube do it themselves um they are going to strategically plaid place ads where retention Makes the most sense and where they're you know they're going to get the most money because they make money too by the way so they're going to do a good job but some people just place them Very often i would put them where it makes sense in a video. When you look at the video, if there's a natural break or something or, or a cliffhanger is the best place to put it right before, right after the cliffhanger is about to start. Boom, put it in there. I see that all the time. I know that the wrestling bios does that. He has his little black spots. I guess that's where it's. Rob Wilson Fair to black. Travis Cause he, he basically makes them as the TV shows like commercials. Yeah. Yeah. Which I, you know, because I um youtube premium i i always wonder like why are these black spots what are these why is he doing that's terrible for retention and i forgot that i don't see Ads anymore so i'm literally wanting to write him an email going bro you're gonna kill your retention if you keep doing this now i realize oh he's putting ads there natural, which is crazy. Rob Wilson I'm just looking at what YouTube has done on one of our videos. And it's a 15-minute video. And it's put a mid-roll ad, 6 minutes, 40 into the video, which seems like quite a long time before it adds something. And then it puts an ad right at the very end of a video, like at 15 minutes 30 seconds and the video is 15 minutes 31 seconds which seems like does that count as an ad after a video i don't know If it does which seems a bit odd to me the the word you used there travis a little earlier on was uh natural break points if you think about youtube is it do you think they now have a no that's Probably too many i'm wondering if i have a trillion videos on the platform by now you know it would not be probably you think about shorts because they say that i think 20 million videos Are uploaded every single day so maybe they're not at a trillion anyway they have billions of videos on a platform, or let's say at least billions of monetized videos on the platform. They have the most extraordinary data behind this and viewer habits when it comes to ads. I think I'm probably just going to put my trust and faith in YouTube. Having said that, if the creator wants to AB test this, so like find two videos that perform relatively similar that are evergreen, put your own ads in one of those videos and see if it Does increase the revenue, but also see if it decreases the average view direction and impacts impressions. ([Time 0:39:10](https://share.snipd.com/snip/782c431b-d9b6-43a1-af51-c1ed349fb6eb))