YouTube Views Are Down, Here Is Why.  ## Metadata - Author: [[TubeTalk: Your YouTube How-To Guide]] - Full Title: YouTube Views Are Down, Here Is Why. - Category: #podcasts - URL: https://share.snipd.com/episode/0e4f4611-ad63-4cea-9bdd-e9973f2dde57 ## Document Notes ## Highlights - **Sudden Mid‑August View Drop** - Multiple creators reported a sudden view decline beginning mid-August, which differed from normal seasonal dips. - The pattern suggested a platform-level issue rather than individual channel changes. Transcript: Travis Been going on lately. And for those of you who have not been paying attention, a couple of larger creators have recently stated that since about mid-August of this year, views have been declining for their Channels. And this happens from time to time on YouTube for a variety of reasons. The ones that are normal are seasonal. In other words, certain times of the year, you can bet on views being terrible. January being one of those. Beginning of summertime, a lot of time is the other. And then going back to school around September, actually, ironically, around this time would be a third. But this is different. There's different markers in this that are kind of showing that something different is going on. Dan, when did you first ([Time 0:01:04](https://share.snipd.com/snip/bab64d1f-27b0-4e24-a988-92f3bed28a7d)) - **Linus Podcast Sparked Concern** - Linus's podcast clip was an early catalyst bringing attention to the issue. - He described a ~30% sudden drop and prompted more creators to investigate. Transcript: Travis Videos now. Dan Yeah. I think right around when Linus uploaded their podcast clip it, someone sent it to me. And I watched it. And, you know, it's hard to know in the moment if you're looking at a channel that is complaining about views on their end. And they have a lot. The stakes are high over there. They have a bunch of employees and people who work on that channel. The channel is the lifeblood of the whole operation. And so if it's going down, they have to be concerned. And this points to an issue that I believe them, that they were having this issue, but I didn't quite see it yet as like a widespread sort of thing. I think it was the catalyst, though. But maybe someone else was already tapping into this. ([Time 0:01:56](https://share.snipd.com/snip/9caaf4f2-d7aa-435b-ab75-967507c604a2)) - **Likes Rose While Views Fell** - Channels saw likes-per-view rise even as total views fell, implying the remaining audience was more engaged. - That pattern hinted lost views were low-quality or non-monetized rather than core viewers leaving. Transcript: Dan Right. Travis Like these two graphs track really, really closely with each other until suddenly at the beginning of August, they decouple. All right. And I'm going to explain what this graph is. If you're looking at the YouTube video, you're going to see, this is a graph that one of the people who works for Linus put together. This, this became the, one of the first clues as to what was going on. This is the views expected versus the revenue they got per view and per video. What's interesting is what you would normally expect, which is what most of this graph shows, is the more views you got, the more money you make. Duh, like, hello, everyone knows this. But what was interesting is, is in this August timeframe, they still were getting as much money as they were normally, but they were getting less views. That was the biggest monkey wrench in all of this. When this was found out and then people saw this information and they started checking, they're like, yeah, this is the same for me. And there was another thing. Likes were up compared to views. So you were getting many more likes per view than you were before this August date. This was very confusing. Dan What were your thoughts as this information was shared so the thought i had immediately when they mentioned especially when they mentioned likes was that okay if your revenue and engagement Are not changing relatively speaking video after video that means the views you're losing here are not ([Time 0:13:36](https://share.snipd.com/snip/e66144e2-fa3f-4d4c-a420-eafc0a4aa0b1)) - **Bot Purge Was An Early Hypothesis** - Dan initially suspected a bot purge could explain the drop because monetized engagement stayed steady. - He compared it to Twitch's bot purge which caused visible viewer declines there. Transcript: Dan When they mentioned especially when they mentioned likes was that okay if your revenue and engagement are not changing relatively speaking video after video that means the views You're losing here are not real that was my thought right like you are getting bots on your channel we all probably are and youtube has done something about the bots and at least temporarily This is what's going to look like now the reason that my mind went to that so fast was because over on twitch they very publicly just did a thing where they flipped a switch and got rid of A lot of bots and if you go and look there's all kinds of stories about this twitch's numbers are through the floor compared to where they were because of this purge this bot purge now i Do think that eventually it'll pick back up i think these bot companies are companies they're scrappy they they want to make their money and they're going to figure it out so i'm thinking Like everyone's making a big to do about nothing youtube got rid of fake views and that that's where my mind was and i was pretty set on that again still not making a video here at vidIQ about It. Still, I felt like so many people were still talking about it. I'm like, I'm going to wait. You know, we don't know anything yet. And YouTube hasn't said much. So let's just chill. ([Time 0:14:50](https://share.snipd.com/snip/f22f996c-55e1-4ad9-926d-4ec5b72196a2)) - **Desktop Views Plummeted** - Josh Strife Hayes gathered data from dozens of creators and found desktop views dropped sharply. - That device-specific decline shifted attention to desktop-only causes rather than overall audience loss. Transcript: Dan Should explain like, yeah, on YouTube, in your analytics, these are there, they're in a couple different places. One pretty easy to find i think in your audience tab and another hidden in advanced mode but there's a few different types of devices that youtube categorizes it it goes tv desktop or Computer we'll we'll use those interchangeably because i think it used to be called desktop but it just says computer now desktop um tablet and mobile there might even be another i i Have a lot of tablet viewers on my channel i don't think that iq has tablet viewers very much yeah so i actually have tablet viewers represented maybe that's just a test that i'm in so they Might add more devices in the future but as of right now i think those are like the big four device types yeah people watch youtube on and this becomes important for strategies down the Travis Line like if you if you a lot of television viewers, you want to make yourself look like a television show. And also, perhaps more importantly, it can be longer because people's attention span on television is longer. Okay. Anyway, so all that being said, the interesting thing was is from the, you know, after the digging is that desktop viewers were down. And that was really interesting because while it didn't exactly answer specifically why money was up, even though views were down, when you start to dig further into it, you actually Realize there's a possible correlation between that and ad blockers. Now, here's a section about what Josh said in regards to this. It's not the entire thing, but it is kind of the part where he starts to wrap it up. And I think it's really critical to listen to this. Very good stuff. Dan Because the reduction in views was from desktop, and yet we haven't seen a reduction in ad revenue, I think we can then make two points. The lost views were not monetized views. Because if they were, we would have seen a reduction in revenue, which we didn't. And computers, both desktop and laptop, are more likely to have third-party ad blockers installed than mobiles, TVs, or tablets. But there's a third aspect to this. YouTube have claimed they have not changed how long-form views are recorded. And I think they are telling the truth. They haven't changed how they show the data they receive, which leads me to two possible conclusions. Either a huge amount of computer viewers all decided on August 10th to collectively stop watching a huge amount of channels all at once, which I think is remarkably unlikely. Or two, the data of the views wasn't being sent to YouTube because it either didn't happen or did happen and wasn't being sent. ([Time 0:25:20](https://share.snipd.com/snip/74d67d8b-c6ab-4b12-9f0a-48e737857aa1)) - **Monetization Stayed Stable** - Lost views were likely non‑monetized because ad revenue stayed stable despite view losses. - Desktop users are more likely to run ad blockers, connecting the desktop drop to blocked view reporting. Transcript: Travis It's not the entire thing, but it is kind of the part where he starts to wrap it up. And I think it's really critical to listen to this. Very good stuff. Dan Because the reduction in views was from desktop, and yet we haven't seen a reduction in ad revenue, I think we can then make two points. The lost views were not monetized views. Because if they were, we would have seen a reduction in revenue, which we didn't. And computers, both desktop and laptop, are more likely to have third-party ad blockers installed than mobiles, TVs, or tablets. But there's a third aspect to this. YouTube have claimed they have not changed how long-form views are recorded. And I think they are telling the truth. They haven't changed how they show the data they receive, which leads me to two possible conclusions. Either a huge amount of computer viewers all decided on August 10th to collectively stop watching a huge amount of channels all at once, which I think is remarkably unlikely. ([Time 0:26:44](https://share.snipd.com/snip/c4ef148a-2cab-4783-82d7-6f7a8117b93e)) - **Ad‑Block Battle Caused Reporting Gaps** - YouTube has been actively fighting ad blockers and briefly blocked some desktop ad‑block users from accessing YouTube. - That action plausibly prevented view events from reaching YouTube analytics while leaving ad revenue unchanged. Transcript: Travis Something probably did change where YouTube either, because, you know, in part of this episode too, he also talks about and shows, and anyone who's been paying attention knows that YouTube has been fighting ad blockers for a while. And I guess there was a date around this same time where computers that had ad blockers uh on them couldn't even access youtube at all yeah which makes less i think yeah yeah like that date Dan There's a new story around this there's also reddit posts that he shows he did a lot of research to get to this conclusion it wasn't just oh desktop views i'll make this assumption he went In and like really found people at that same exact time saying why is YouTube loading? And, you know, turned out ad blocker. And again, that makes sense because from the monetized view perspective, you're not losing money. Travis Well, an ad blocker doesn't give you money anyway. So that is an actual scenario where whereby, you know, you would see less views, but your money would stay the same. Now, before this came out, I was thinking, well, maybe they just changed the way they do counts. And they're just not counting like body views, whatever, like you were talking about earlier. And that could also be the same thing. But this makes more sense. Because if you think about it, the one thing YouTube has done recently when it comes to views is inflate them with shorts. They count them differently now as impressions rather than views. So that number went up. ([Time 0:28:07](https://share.snipd.com/snip/76e0a4de-12f6-45ca-9546-8129b7ad68df)) - **YouTube Liaison Corroborated Ad‑Block Link** - YouTube liaison Rene Ritchie pointed to ad blockers impacting reported view counts. - This public pointer aligned with creators' data and strengthened the ad‑block correlation. Transcript: Travis And then a day or so later, for me, the final nail in the coffin, Rene Ritchie, who the YouTube liaison on Twitter, shared this, where he says, viewers, you, and again, the question was From Lon Seidman, who's, he's been around for a long time. He's a tech YouTuber. How does a video with only 2,000 views get 1,100 likes, which is crazy, and this is one of the things we were talking about, where you get a lot of likes for views And he goes, and Renee quotes A help page and also links the help page. Viewers using ad blockers and other content blocking tools. Ad blockers and other extensions can impact the accuracy of reported view counts. Channels with audiences with a higher proportion of users utilizing such tools may see fluctuations in traffic related to updates using these tools and bing that's what made the most Sense because a lot of the people that i had seen uh complaining about this were tech channels and notoriously viewers of tech channels have ad blockers they they're ([Time 0:29:39](https://share.snipd.com/snip/2ce8c0a1-44d8-4fdc-ad6d-861bd8a2e9ff)) - **Tech Channels Were Most Affected** - Tech channels were hit hardest because their audiences are more likely to use ad blockers. - Gaming channels with younger, less tech‑savvy viewers reported little or no impact. Transcript: Dan Channel is talking about and i don't know if this is true or not but they were claiming they're having a really good month that they weren't noticing anything and gaming channels oftentimes Have a younger audience. And I think it was Moist Critical who was saying, because he was covering the Josh Trape's video. And in his video, I agree with his opinion. A lot of younger viewers don't really know what an ad blocker is or care to install one. And so, you know, yes, there's probably some channels out there that feel like, I don't know what everyone's going on about. And they might have a younger audience or an audience that is not like as tech savvy to have one of these installed. Travis And I think it's important to, so first of all, Renee is, it was a former tech YouTuber too. I've known Renee for many. I knew before he had this job. He's, very specifically pointing this out and I guarantee you he's seen all these videos yeah so again he linked to the help page but he pulled out that part about ad blockers and stuff Which is something that Josh said in his video not because he randomly chose one section out of that help page he's saying without saying Josh kind of got it right this is confirmation Without confirmation and then later on in the thing he goes YouTube hasn't made any changes to how long form views are counted, including desktop, which is further confirmation, further Pushes you into the fact that I believe also Josh got it right, which I'm just going to say kudos because as he says, he doesn't even like making videos like that. It's not his normal thing. He usually makes games videos about games yet figured out something would have been very difficult that even people who are really into this sort of thing didn't figure out like crazy. Dan I'm thoroughly impressed. Yeah, he's done some incredible work here. Just shout out to him. He's been on the channel before. I've talked to him in the context of like starting a gaming channel, things like that. He's volunteered his time. He's really gracious and smart. And this was really cool to see from him um i i just i have one question i don't think this is for josh or anyone i'm also not doubting his research uh or conclusions but my one question about This whole thing is if it's true that ad blockers made the desktop version of youtube not functional for so many people why did that last so many days? And I'm pretty sure it's still going on, right? Viewers are lower. Why is it that all of those folks gave up? Like what happened to them? Yeah. Like so many people stopped watching YouTube. Did they just get mad and go to Twitch? They didn't pick up their phones and go, I guess I'll watch on phone today. Yeah. But if you were going to YouTube with the intent to watch something you wouldn't just stop watching for weeks and weeks right like yeah i think wild it's hard to know like so one thing is Travis If if they primarily watch on their computer they might just think youtube's down because one of the other things that that went up i think in this video he talked about was the searches For is youtube down went up that same kind of day range. And that was probably from all the people that had AppLockers installed. And it could be that they just watched something else. It could be they watched on a different device. It could be that those views would have been on the homepage. And when they came in on another device, those videos that would have been promoted to them on their homepage were no longer being promoted to them on their other device. Because as you know, some, if you watch on your phone versus watch on your desktop, different videos sometimes are completely recommended to you depending on the device you're on. ([Time 0:30:59](https://share.snipd.com/snip/2ad23d02-f83e-4d05-8e3f-57b4e9e95614)) - **Don't Change Strategy Over This** - Do nothing radical to your content because this is a platform analytics issue, not a content problem. - Continue making great videos and monitor data for future changes. Transcript: Travis Now, as a creator, you're like, well, now what do I do? Nothing. There's nothing you can do. You can put this as part of the trailer too. There's nothing you can do. It's over. It's over. No, it's not over. There's nothing you can do. There's nothing you need to worry about doing. Make great content. Dan That's always the best advice, I think, is because we give so much advice. A lot of people don't want to follow it they'd rather they'd rather not so this is the one time we're giving you the advice to not do anything right i i have sorry just being a little salty That's true i have like two conclusions or predictions i don't know you want to call them yeah the first is that i don't think this goes away overnight i think this happens again soon. In fact, I think the war between ad block and YouTube is just starting and we are going to see more wacky things going on. And I think going forward, it's safe for us to assume that when things look a little bit strange, you should probably go this direction with your first assumption, you know, and then Do some research from there within your data. Because that is going to continue. And it makes sense. Desktop is very easy to get ad block installed. Mobile and stuff, not so much. So it makes a ton of sense. That is one thing. And there's another thing. I can't remember what it was. Travis That's all right. I mean, it'll come back to you. I hate that same thing that's happening to me when I get on a train track of thought and then I get derailed. ([Time 0:34:45](https://share.snipd.com/snip/be672014-b5e5-468a-a34a-47af1b8edeb8)) - **Ask YouTube For Clearer Tradeoffs** - Demand more transparency or product tradeoffs from YouTube like channel‑level ad‑free memberships. - Encourage YouTube to offer clearer concessions when it restricts common user tools. Transcript: Dan The second one's for YouTube. I believe that this is still a burning hot fire that you're not putting out the right way. Why is Adblock so popular? Is because YouTube is a platform in my personal opinion, not the opinions of vid IQ, just my personal opinion. You've gone a little bit nuts with ads. Now I'm not even saying the amount of ads. I am saying that people have been pointing out for ages that there are dangerous ads that promote scams on this platform constantly. And I know the day that gets addressed, we're not going to hear about it in a news story. It's just going to quietly go away. And maybe it already has and people aren't talking. I don't know. The last I heard is that's still very alive and well, is that ads promoting scams are still on this platform. And I want to see some work done there. YouTube is doing a lot to prevent people from using ad blockers, but I don't feel like they're doing enough to then give us back something in return. If I can't use an ad blocker, which I'm not, I'm on premium, very happy premium subscriber. Okay. But if I can't use one, right, then what am I going to get in return? Scammed? Like I need, I need something in exchange. And another thing, this is a total aside, but they have memberships for channels. If premiums a little too costly, make it so people can set up a membership for their channel where one of the perks is not seeing ads on that particular channel. At least then you get money still. And your favorite creators, like you can choose which creators as the viewer you want to give that money to. And you know, YouTube gets a cut and then there's no ads on that particular channel for you. ([Time 0:36:34](https://share.snipd.com/snip/9241f24e-9796-42bc-9220-ef6b46bab681))