YouTube rolled out a slew of changes over the past few months, most notably the change in how creators get monetised, and the view counter now counting after 1-second of watch time instead of the original 30-seconds.
YouTube's reasoning is to fight against mass automation and AI slop. Creators are required to disclose any AI use in visuals, voiceovers, and deepfake edits (yay!). Misleading thumbnails and clickbait can also get your application to YPP (YouTube's Partnership Program) rejected (also a yay!); however, this change hurts small creators, especially ones who haven't been monetised before.
Here where's we get to the tinfoil hatting...
Please bear in mind everything I say from here on is unsubstantiated. The tinfoil hat is pointy.
I read this article from Bloomberg on how YouTube is offering millions of dollars to popular channels if they upload their videos to the YouTube exclusively in an effort to halt Netflix's pursuit of its biggest stars.
Netflix has been buying up a lot of creator shows, ones started and serialised on YouTube. And that scares YouTube.
Netflix is a competitor, and YouTube wants to turn long-form storytelling into a ""show"" to compete. They want a slice of the pie. So my hypothesis is: to do that, they need to incentivise more long-form creators.
I also believe YouTube is will reduce the price of YouTube Premium to incentivise more people to pay (hence the higher monetisation limits), because now the videos are good. It put money into making long-form storytelling better quality to compete. It's no longer a a shit platform with a shit video you wasted your time on. Once that's done, I think they'll pay creators less and bump up subscriptions because now it's us, the subscribers, paying the content creators directly. Google (who owns YouTube) can get out of paying creators. It's us paying us for the quality content.
It's the old-fashioned cable model. By doing this, YouTube no longer has to carve the creator payout from their own profits.
So... view counts?
The view count change is a way to compete with TikTok and Instagram. If you're just scrolling past a YouTube Short, it will count as a view whether you actually watched the video or not. It's the same method TikTok and Instagram currently have, artificially inflating the value of Shorts. It's the exposure-based model. It is going to inflate view counts like crazy, but the payout model stays the exact same via the new Engaged View – which is defined as watching past the first frame, and this will continue to be how creators qualify for the YPP. The bar for a view (or an 'impression' as marketers call it) has dropped. The view is now meaningless to the creator, but fantastic for YouTube. They get to wave their shiny sign and say 'look at how many people are on YouTube!' making it great for advertisers who pay YouTube, not the creator.
Ironically enough, despite YouTube rolling out anti-botting measures to stop AI slop from taking over the platform, the only channels that benefit from the view count change are AI slop channels. AI bots can now farm view count.
It also incentivises creators to post more clickbait because it gets your foot in the door. Making you stick around isn't the goal anymore. It doesn't matter if you figure out it's clickbait three seconds in, the clickbait still got your view and it counted.
What does this mean for marketers?
The metrics that matter are changing. Metrics like watch time, retention, average percent view, and the new Engaged View are going to become much more useful in determining the success of a campaign performance. A raw view is not information in of itself. What happens after people started watching is where the game is at. This means DUMB marketers are gonna get DUMB results because they didn't know how meaningless a view is now. But it doesn't matter. YouTube still gets your money.
What does it mean for investors?
Big shiny number! Squiggly capitalism line go up! We can compete with TikTok!