Getting YouTube Views Is Changing: What Marketers Need to Know

0:00I'm Mari Smith, known as the premier Facebook marketing expert, aka queen of Facebook, and this is actually my 14th time because I have been at every single social media marketing world. There is no amount of sophisticated technology that can ever take the place of live, in person, IRL, heart to heart, face to face. You could very well meet some of your best friends, clients, joint venture partners, alliances, have opportunities, podcasts, speaking engagements, it's extraordinary. So come on in for this beautiful, in-person experience. Get tickets at socialmediamarketingworld.info.

0:38Welcome to the Social Media Marketing Podcast, helping you navigate the social media jungle. And now, here is your host, Michael Stelzner. Hello, hello, hello. Thank you so much for joining me for the Social Media Marketing Podcast brought to you by Social Media Examiner. I'm your host, Michael Stelzner, and this is the podcast for marketers and business owners who want more exposure, more leads, and more sales. Today, Jerry Potter and I are exploring important updates from YouTube with our special guest, Justin Brown. Take it away, Jerry. Thanks, Mike. Great to be here. I can't remember a YouTube change that caused as much confusion as when they changed what counts as a view.

1:17So today we're going to break down exactly what happened, but more importantly, what that means for marketers and business owners, plus explore ways to earn more views, clicks, and leads from YouTube now that things have evolved so much. So we're excited to be joined by Justin Brown. Justin's the face of Primal Video, one of the world's largest YouTube channels dedicated to video creation education, where he shares the best video tools, tech, and practical no-fluff strategies that actually get results. I'm a big fan of the channel myself. Today, Justin, Mike, and I are going to explore what these latest updates from YouTube mean for small business marketers and owners like you.

1:50Justin, welcome back to the show. Thank you very much for having me back. So great to hang out with both of you. So I want to start by just having you explain your understanding of this, because what was a view is not a view now. And now we have this new term, engaged views for long form videos. So walk us through that real quick. I think I've always seen this disparity between the different platforms. People would be like, I upload a video on TikTok and I get this many views. I put it on Facebook and I get this many views. And they're all counted different. On some platforms, it's just been for a long time that you swipe past a video, that's a view.

2:22And I think a lot of people are looking at YouTube saying, well, I upload a video there and I don't get as many views as I do on other platforms. So this is YouTube playing catch up. So they're now changing how they are counting what a view is. And it really is almost very close to an impression where if someone scrolls past and the video auto plays for a split second, that's now a view. So it's really changing the way that views are tracked. And I guess the typical way that we used to track a view on YouTube is now called an engaged view. So someone who has engaged, they've shown some interest, they've stuck around for a little bit, or maybe their browser tab is open.

2:58This is something that YouTube hasn't really laid out exactly what an engaged view is, but they're engaged somehow. They know that that person is engaged with that video and that content and not just idly swiping past. So that's now what we've got. A view, which is a very quick preview almost, that someone has been on there. And then engaged view is I've spent more time or I am engaged on the platform more at that time. Justin, what did a view used to be? Talk to us about what it was before this change, just so people can understand the difference. Yeah. So before on YouTube, it was more of this engaged view.

3:30There was rumors around that used to be 30 seconds, but 30 seconds was never a good metric because what if you had a really short video? So they always had this loose terminology on what a view was, but it was someone who had watched enough of the video to be considered significant enough to be classed as a view. I wish I had a better explanation for you because they didn't really give us this. But on some videos, it could mean a few seconds. It could mean quite a lot of the video. Now, this is really intriguing to me because as someone who publishes on six different platforms, TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, and X, it is fascinating to me how all the other platforms have moved to this view, which is really an impression.

4:10Okay, like X is, a view on X is an impression. A view on Facebook is an impression. and a view on Instagram is an impression. So it seems to me as if YouTube was a little late to the party, except for shorts, right? Because haven't shorts all along been quote unquote impressions and not really views because they're so short, they don't even know how to measure it. I don't know. Talk to me a little bit about that. What's your thoughts? I think it depends where you see them. So an impression on YouTube could still be your video is showing up on the homepage, but it's not, it's not been hovered over.

4:41It's not starting to play, right? So I still think there is a difference between impressions and a view. Yes, in some places, shorts will autoplay, especially if you're in the mobile app and swiping through, then yes, an impression there is a view. But yeah, I think if you're looking at in context of even browsing through on TV, some of these videos now that didn't autoplay before are starting to autoplay. And on mobile and on desktop as well, that now is a view. And what I've actually found with my own viewing behavior, especially on mobile, is that I've actually been watching videos and I haven't tapped on them.

5:12So they've started to autoplay as I'm swiping past. Like, oh, this is really interesting. I'm like, wow, I'm halfway through this video and I didn't click on it. So I do think it is interesting and driving engaged views based on YouTube algorithm, understanding you, your viewing behavior, the content that you like. It's actually is driving more engaged views from what I'm seeing and from my own experience as well. Well, and just to be clear, how do we delineate a view in an engaged view? Is there a formal explanation as to what the heck an engaged view is? It's blurry. It's a gray area. Yeah. How do they even know you're engaged?

5:45I mean, any thoughts on this, Justin? I think this is the creepy level that Google and YouTube go to. They have their own web browser. They have their own operating systems, Chromebooks, Android phones. They're tracking everything. So who knows to what level they're really looking to see this person is engaged. That browser tab is open. It was, you know, you watched a previous video, so you're more likely to watch this next one if it auto plays. I think they're getting to that sort of a level more than a percentage of video actually watched. Yeah, and I think they were delightfully vague when they officially announced this.

6:19And I think for two reasons. One, as you said, we don't really know what an engaged view officially is or even what a view was before this change. And they don't want us to know because they don't want people to try and game the system. Like I'm gonna do anything to get somebody to the five second mark or whatever it is. But I also think they were delightfully vague because they're still, they want room to wiggle. They're still trying to figure it out because the initial wording could have been interpreted as if, you know, like they said, the first frame now is a view. So if somebody hovers over your video and sees a frame, that counts as a view, which is what, one 29th of a second or whatever.

6:51But if you hover long enough, they said that could count as an engaged view. So that two second loop. That little preview without audio thing is what you're talking about? Yeah, that could actually become an engaged view. And they consider it that, I guess, because I guess you are engaging in that moment. But it's really bizarre. Justin, I'd love to know, what's your guess for what an engaged view is? You think it depends on the video length? I do think it depends on the video length because obviously with the short, it could be much shorter or the length of the video. I would like to imagine that it's a couple of seconds.

7:25So you've at least, all right, I've seen a small piece of this, this is for me or not. And it really should then depend on what happens next. Like if they're out at that point, then maybe don't count it. If they've stuck around a bit longer, like it should just be constantly checking, I would imagine. But who knows? Maybe this is maybe YouTube themselves don't know. And this is all their AIs programming and building this thing that they don't even know. So they can't tell us the definite answer. Question, what metric should we be looking at? Because YouTube is the platform that has the most available metrics that I've seen, you know.

7:58So what do you recommend we look at as creators and marketers when it comes to metrics? I mean, it's going to come down for your goal for YouTube, right? So if you are a business, you're running in marketing for another business, views are one thing to look at, but it's, you know, what is the goal of making the video? Is it to just build an audience? Is it to grow your email list, drive sales? I think views are just one small piece of it. And if it is used for business, it's like, what's your goal for this? That's the main metric. Is this building our business? Is it building our brand? Is it generating sales, leads, customers?

8:33That really would be my metric and I would work backwards from that. What about average watch time? Because I kind of feel like that might be a metric worth watching. Because like I know I'm creating short form content every single day. And sometimes the stuff that has longer watch time, kind of I can deduce that that might be more valuable for me because, you know, especially when you're comparing videos, right? So when you're trying to say, okay, should I make more like this or more like this? Would the view duration, I think is what they call it, right? Is that the metric that would be valuable to look at?

9:03I think they're all valuable to look at. And it's got to be taken almost on a case-by-case basis. If you're doing a series like you are now where the content is very similar, like so you're repeating, you've got a series, then yes, you can start to draw some conclusions. If you're on a channel like ours where I could be talking about editing software one week and how to film with an iPhone the next, then they're two different things. So a longer watch time on one doesn't necessarily mean that people got more value or it's saying back the other way. If they watch for a shorter period of time, maybe they got everything they needed out of that.

9:34You change their world, change their life, allow them to go do something and they will constantly come back to your channel from there. So it's an individual human experience off the back of the content you're creating as well. So I think with any of these analytics, I like to treat it as it's interesting. It's interesting that this one has more views than this one. but until we're actually tracking something on to a lead or sale lining up with a goal for that video and why we made it in the first place it's hard to really say yes this one was really good versus this one in line with our goals jerry i'd love you to chime in with your thoughts on this because i know you also are a youtube expert what do you think about this well yeah i mean the watch time is everything just like on short form content and the longer a certain type of person watches then the more likely youtube is to recommend it to more people who are that same type of person.

10:20Like they're looking at that all the time. And so I think, yeah, the numbers we need to look at, I'm just going to say it. Views, if you're trying to grow a business, are a nice ego number. Like I love that every video I've released since the change is like one of 10, one of 10, right? Because they immediately have this inflated number. Potentially, that's a branding play potentially for your brand, right? Yes. But internally, like Justin talked about generating leads, if that's what we're doing as businesses or awareness or any of that, then I think the engaged view is the one that we need to look at, which is what the view was before.

10:52And then of course, watch time, click through rate, you know, there's a lot of different numbers that are important. I personally think, you know, cause I, a lot of times work with people that are like, I can't go in and look at an endless spreadsheet. AI helps with that now, along with, with other tools, but it's like, did they click and how long did they watch? And those are the, those are the ones. But I think, I mean, would you agree, Justin views from a business standpoint is almost meaningless other than it it feels nice it looks nice to other people it definitely feels nice and when you don't you know and you put out a video it's not the one in 10 or it's the 10 out of 10 yeah i think look how a video performs initially is also not a representation of how a video can perform long term especially for us targeting the search side of youtube our video we're not getting big numbers even with this channel the size that we have day one week one But over time, it filters into the search side and now AI driving traffic to us as well.

11:42Then our videos start to snowball over time. Because I have you here, I can't not ask this question, Justin. Retention graphs, how important is that now? Because like obviously everybody wants a graph that kind of slowly, gradually goes down because that's a signal that they're watching your content. But that's not always good because sometimes YouTube shows your content to other people and that retention graph will start diving a little bit. But do you look at retention graphs? Do they matter? Tell me what your thoughts are on that. I think, look, we can spend so much time diving into the analytics.

12:12The forward focusing is what I'd always recommend to people. Yeah, you want to look back and see what worked, what didn't work. So I'd look at your outliers. What was my top performing video in that period? What was my lowest performing in that period? What can I learn from that? And if this is your top performing video in terms of engaged views or views or watch time, what does that retention graph look like? What can I learn? Is there any places where people dropped off? and likewise do it for the ones that didn't perform because you might find the ones that didn't perform that we just dropped a lot of people at the start but the ones that stuck around like the rest of the video could have been awesome but we maybe failed on the hook or YouTube was pushing it out to the wrong people so the wrong people landed on and left right away so it's never just one metric in isolation so I'd look at the outliers the top ones the bottom ones and yes your average view duration your watch time your attention all of that stuff like what's actually happening inside the video for the people that choose to watch more than that first 30 seconds.

13:07That's interesting. Do you ever recommend on one that's got just an incredible, you know, it got a drop and then it flattens. You ever recommend going back and re-editing those and putting a new hook in there and just trying it? Or do you just create so much content that you just move on to the next video? We would normally just move on. And these days, I mean, you can't add stuff back into a video. There's YouTube does have it. You can republish it is what I'm saying. You could republish it. We have definitely, uh, use the YouTube edit tool to trim something out. So if I'm testing a hook, I would, uh, look, and there was times where we would actually shoot multiple hooks, push the video live.

13:40And then we just take out the ones that, you know, trim out a section and we could bring it back. Now you can't bring it back anymore. If you make an edit to a live video on YouTube, you can take stuff out. You can't put stuff back in. And once it's done, you can't undo it now. Oh, you used to be able to undo it. Okay. Yeah. Yeah, there's no undo button now. So if there is a piece where you wanted to test a longer intro or something like that, then you could come back and trim out a clear cut. And these days, people wouldn't even notice if there was a jump cut or the music skipped a little bit.

14:12They're watching free stuff on YouTube. So you can take stuff out. Look, if a video totally tanked, day one, week one, again, we're optimizing for the search side of YouTube. So I'd be like, hey, that's interesting. It doesn't feel great for my ego, but I'd probably leave it because some of our biggest videos tanked straight away and took some time. Yeah, I have a video on my channel that got 16 views in its first month and it recently passed 100 ,000 views. So yeah, YouTube is a weird beast in that way. So I'm curious when people are looking at their own channels, you know, since this change, as of this recording, we're about a month since it all kicked in.

14:49On your channel, what are you seeing in terms of views to engaged views? Because I'm just curious, like, Like, should it be double? I can tell you from my channel, it's way more than I thought it would be. I thought it would be like 20 % more views than engaged views. But what are you seeing on your channel, Justin? Yeah, we saw a significant bump. And yeah, I was a little excited when I saw it. Like, wow, what's happened? And oh, the views thing came in today. So yeah, like the baseline now is raised in terms of the amount of views, but the engaged views seem to be kind of on par, maybe up a little bit.

15:21I was looking at this before. So it has increased slightly, but also that we're constantly testing new content. So our channel is not a good example of seeing, if I mentioned AI editing, AI video editing, we know that those videos are going to take off. And we've done a few of those recently. Whereas some of the other ones, I know that they take longer to filter in. So yes, things are looking up, especially if you look at views, but engaged views are up. But it's kind of, it's just the new baseline. It's just a shift. The most annoying thing for me is that they don't seem to have rolled this out across everywhere yet.

15:53So if I look on desktop, I'm seeing different view counts to in the mobile app for live streams and things as well, like totally different view counts. So, you know, this is it's also pretty normal for YouTube as well to start to roll these things out. Maybe it's because I'm in Australia and I'm seeing a delayed version or something. I don't know. No, I mean, I've seen my view counts go up. And for the first time I've seen them go down like a couple of days later. I'm like, wait, that was at this number before. Wow. OK. They probably showed it to more of a sample group. And then they, you know, like, and it didn't take off.

16:25And then all of a sudden it slowed down. Maybe that's it. Well, no, no, I don't mean slowed down. I mean, like it went like all of a sudden there was a hundred less than there was a couple of days ago. So, oh, they took them away. So I think a lot of this is still shaking out. But I guess what I'm curious about, Justin, is are you seeing an average ratio? Like you're getting twice as many views as engaged views or what? No, it's because we're checking, like we're changing the content too much to give something like that. I know now on average, if we put out a video targeted search without a clickbaity title, we might in the first 24 hours get a few thousand views.

16:59Now that's probably up at around five to 7 ,000. But again, it's hard to gauge because I know some of those videos are around the AI editing stuff, which is a trending thing. And yeah, so it's hard to say, but yes, there's definitely been a bump. And look, it does feel good when we see it, like views are up. Yeah, yeah. But it's what it means for the backend tracking, which doesn't seem to have moved a whole lot. Yeah. And I know, I mean, I'll share from my channel, I'm seeing one and a half to it, like one video was three times as many views as engaged views. And so I'm still trying to, you know, think about that.

17:31Okay, this video is getting in front of a lot more people. And they may or may not be clicking to me, which I think means, okay, maybe I need to look at my packaging. Is that, am I interpreting that the right way? If, if somebody has, like, like, let's say the ratio, I think this will become a future thing we compare. Like right now we compare impressions to views, right? Or we have. In the future, we'll probably compare views to engaged views. So if that number is lopsided compared to your channel average, what would you look at trying to maybe change? I think right now we could probably, because it hasn't been out for long enough, I think.

18:02And I do agree that that will become the metric. And instead of your impressions to click through rate, it will be converting a view to an engaged view. It would be the more meaningful metric, especially if things are auto-playing. But I think it still comes down to the packaging on the video. So the title, the thumbnail, which thumbnail is less important now if we're going to be auto playing, if we're showing where it's auto playing. But I think what you're doing in the start of the video is more important. And this kind of came in a while back when YouTube first brought in the auto playing of content that even they call it like the toilet TV with someone scrolling on the bathroom, right?

18:37And the things are playing and they're watching it in silent. They haven't clicked on it. So this has been there for a while. We would make sure that we had text on screen at the start saying what the video is about. So they've got the title, they've maybe seen a thumbnail or not if it's auto-played, but there's text at the start of the video saying what it's about. That helped us significantly when that rolled out because it's helping get someone into that engaged state, or I want to watch this instead of just someone like a talking head where it's hard to work out what they're saying if you're watching with the sound off.

19:05So wait, just so we're clear on what you mean by this, you're talking about like some sort of a baked in title, which you would see in more short content. You know what I mean? Like some sort of a baked in caption at the top that says, this is what this is all about. Is that kind of what we're talking about? Or are we talking about something different here? No, no, exactly. So some text that's not the captions that people can turn on or off. This is text like best editing software, Mac 2026 or something like that. So I was like, okay, I know exactly what the video is about if it auto-played. If they can't see the thumbnail.

19:36And so are you saying, I mean, does it always show that that looping preview? Is it always the beginning of the video? Because I feel like when I'm watching sometimes, especially if I hover over my own, it might be something in the middle. And if it's just me talking, it's usually when I threw up my hands or something, you know, like here, I'll wave my hands right now. So when this is on YouTube later, we'll see if this is the preview or is it always the first two seconds in your experience? I think it used to be like that where it would just show you a random clip. Whereas now what I'm seeing is it's auto playing the videos from the start.

20:06And if I pause and scroll past and come back, and it will continue from where it was because it knows that I watched that piece. So it's almost like you can watch them in bits as it's like, okay, well, you liked this. I'm going to serve this back to you now. Maybe you want to pick it up and keep watching. And this is auto-playing in the mobile app. Love it. I made a note to my video editor that we need to make sure to do that because, and anybody who's listening, this is a huge tip. The idea that you can bake a title right into the video that's there for the first three seconds or so while the action is coming on the screen for anyone who's not watching it with captions on, right?

20:40I mean, that's a big deal. Yeah, it's something that's so easy to do. It's not, you know, it's not like you need to go hire a specific video editor to do this or anything. It's just simple text on screen. Here's what the promise of the video is. Here are the outcome, the transformation. I'm gonna take you from here to here. Hi, my name is Mandy Hedrick and I'm here at Social Media Marketing World. My first time attending Social Media Marketing World and I had won my ticket. And so I attended online and the impact it had in what I could do for my business immediately. It was my goal as a business owner to be able to earmark the dollars.

21:15This is my second time in person. So I just love being in a room full of people that are like-minded. It's a big investment, but I'm not just investing in myself, but I'm also investing in my clients. And I will be coming back every single year. I'm already ready to buy my next ticket and book my hotel room. Get tickets at socialmediamarketingworld.info. I'm going to make a prediction. I think at some point, if they're not already doing it, YouTube is probably going to test different parts of the preview. Because I already see this on Netflix sometimes. Sometimes the beginning of, you know, when you're scrolling on Netflix or some of the other streaming services, sometimes the beginning of the show or the video will play.

21:54Sometimes it'll be a preview. Sometimes it'll be a scene from the movie. So that'll probably be what's next. Now, another thing kind of related to this and definitely related to views, we've been talking on the show about TV viewership going up and up and up. It's still pretty low on my channel. I think I'm up to 7 % now, but they now have a new metric called views, parentheses, co-viewed. And this is where they're estimating that more than one person might be watching your video on a couch in the living room on the TV, for example. And they're basing it on demographics, the video genre, even the time of day.

22:29So I think they're estimating that in the evening that more people might be watching in a group in the living room, things like that. So, I mean, is it worth starting to strategize like how to get people to watch our videos in groups like subtle things like, hey, grab a friend and go watch this video. Invite your spouse. I mean, is this something we should be thinking about? I think it's an interesting one because I don't know how they're going to track this. And from everything I've read and seen about this is that it's still just a guess on their end. And yet they do have a lot of data. They're probably tracking our phones like, oh, you're in the same building, same apartment, or you have a YouTube family account.

23:06So your kids are probably there with you. Like the fact that we log into YouTube on our TVs with one account for most people and your kids could be watching something. It skews everything anyway, as for the algorithm. But it knows on TV, you watch this kind of stuff. On mobile, you watch this kind of stuff. When you're driving and you're listening to YouTube or shouldn't be watching, then this is this type of content. So it's getting good as for gaming it or telling people like, come get a watch party. Come around and watch this video together. I think they would need a better way of tracking it for it to be a meaningful shift for your content to do that.

23:43Here's a counter perspective. I think they know a lot more about us than you might realize because half of all phones are Android operating systems, which are developed by Google. All phones have typically Google Analytics data on it. So if you're opening up any app or you're visiting any website on your phone, they know where you are. They've all got proximity stuff turned on unless you turn it off. So I can tell you with great certainty, Justin, that they know you and your wife and one of your kids are in your family room while that video is playing. it's scary, but it's true. And I honestly think because they have so much data on us, they probably actually have a lot more insights than we care to admit.

24:23What's your reaction to that? Oh, and hey, didn't LG just get caught out for listening to you or watching stuff as well? So this is, I totally agree with you. They have the data. They're like, and the ads on TVs, they're tracking what you're watching and stuff on the TV side of things as well. So I totally agree with you. I just think that the moment they come out and say that, because they haven't. And it's like, whoa, okay, this is a bit deeper than I thought. It's the same way they know when there's traffic. Exactly, yes. They're tracking all the phones that are in the cars in front of you.

24:54Yeah, and you heard that story of the guy that put a bunch of phones in a shopping cart and pushed it around slowly and blocked it thinking there was a traffic jam, like in rerouting people in these different ways. Yeah, so you can screw with these things a little. But I totally agree, they're tracking. They know, but I think has it been a valuable thing and getting a bunch of people together, time will tell. I do think it's a valuable metric, though, to look at this from the other perspective. Because what did you say it's called, Jerry? What is this thing called? Views co-viewed. Yeah. So this is really valuable, especially if you're creating content like what Pat Flynn is creating, right?

25:30Pat Flynn has this Pokemon content, very targeted to families. like that metric is going to be very, very valuable to potential sponsors. If that data is provided to you, it's going to be very, very valuable to advertisers that are inserting the ads into those particular platforms. So that is a data point that I think marketers would find very intriguing. Yeah, I agree. If a brand deals or anything like your reach has expanded so much more, but it's been the same like this with a newspaper or a magazine. How do you know someone else doesn't pick it up and read it? Right. So they've never really been able to track this well as, as creepily as they can now.

26:03I love that we're getting into the conspiracy theory behind all of this because I love YouTube so much that I just don't even see that stuff. I'm like, no, guys, they're estimating it. I know it's what they said, you know. So, all right, we'll bring you the truth. But real quick, okay, just a little bit of background for folks who want to know how this works. Prior to all this ability to track stuff, typically what would happen is these organizations would partner with third-party organizations. And there's third-party data aggregators that absolutely know basically how many people are within a certain geographic zone.

26:35They know a lot about your family because every time you've ever registered for anything that's free, you know, you provided your address and all this kind of stuff. So there are third party data aggregators that historically have been used to allow organizations like YouTube and Facebook and all these others to basically provide more insights into demographics on the audience. But now that these social platforms have their own data graphs and they've been collecting data on us, like YouTube knows a lot about us, right? They don't just know that we're watching. They know all of our interests and all these other kind of things.

27:09And the same thing with meta. So now they don't need those aggregators as much anymore, but they do have to anonymize it and they have to be careful about how they do it. And it is a slippery slope that us as marketers do benefit from, but consumers, if they truly understood it, I think they'd be pretty up in arms about it. Another huge shift that has been rolling out on YouTube that I think could even be more impactful than the stuff we've been talking about today. If you haven't seen it, YouTube has been rolling out a button called Ask YouTube, and they started on TV, and now it's been rolling out to mobile and desktop as of this recording.

27:43I don't have it yet, but basically it lets users have a conversation with YouTube. They say this is to help people explore complex topics beyond traditional keyword-based search. And so the response can include texts with relevant videos, shorts, video clips. According to YouTube, we can increase the chances of our videos appearing in Ask YouTube results by continuing to create unique, high-quality content, as they always say, and then also adding clear video chapters and descriptive titles. So I think the chapters is a clue there. But I mean, Justin, what's your reaction to this? Is this good news or bad news for marketers and business owners?

28:21Because part of me thinks, oh, is this going to be what ChatGPT and Gemini did to blogs? Yeah, I think whether we like it or not, it's all going this way as humans. I don't want to say we're becoming lazier, but we're expecting things faster. Our time to outcome, time to learn something, time to be entertained and find that content. We're expecting it to be quicker now with all the tools and AI. assistance that we have. So it does make sense that they're doing this. And for them, if they're able to surface content fast or surface an outcome, or here's a handful of videos you should watch if you want to watch, but I've also summarized them or go watch this specific section of that.

28:56I think that's now going to become the new normal where people are just jumping to specific sections, getting what they want without necessarily sitting there and watching the whole thing. Now, the hope is that they get the little teaser or the bit that they want. And then they're like, hey, that was really good. I wonder what the whole video is like, or I'm going to make some time to watch the whole video, which has worked for other areas on like Google's been doing this for a while now. They'll give you a little snippet in a search result. And that little snippet could be enough to help someone or it's also driving traffic to the video.

29:24And like for us, with our channel being a search based channel, our number one traffic source is YouTube search. Our second biggest traffic search is Google search. So people just typing stuff into Google and not even being on YouTube. It's like recommended a video. Oh, I'll watch that. And maybe they've seen a snippet. Maybe they haven't. And the third one then is, this is growing fast for us, is the AI side of things. We're starting to see ChatGPT, Claude show up in our search results. And the amount of comments that we get are like, oh, ChatGPT sent me here. I think this is happening, whether we like it or not.

29:56Wait, are you talking about to your YouTube videos? Yes, to YouTube videos. Oh. Yeah, same. Okay, this opens up a really fascinating dialogue here. So if these tools are created by YouTube to allow you to get the answer, isn't that going to fundamentally alter the way we create YouTube videos? Because a lot of creators like you, Justin, have been very smart about how to retain people on the channel. because if you're careful about how you do it, then they'll watch longer and that's going to benefit you. But if YouTube decides to just jump right to the answer and give you a quick little clip to it, isn't that going to fundamentally alter the way we create longer form content?

30:40I think it's going to change the way that we use the internet and look for stuff as well. We're building on borrowed land by building these YouTube channels or building on different platforms, right? So we have to just evolve and play by the rules. but I really think at the end of the day, what any of these platforms are optimizing for and what we as humans want using them is a good experience. So what is a good experience is changing with AI. So a good experience for me to find a quick answer to something or to sit down with my kids and find something to watch or whatever it might be is going to use these tools, like especially on TV with Ask Google and how do we get that quicker?

31:18And I think this is the shift. So yeah, it's going to change how we make content or how people view our content. But it's all coming down to what is a good experience. So maybe our videos just become so much shorter. Or more entertaining. Or entertaining. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, one of the things I've been thinking about is what can I show in my videos or what videos can I make that definitely show something? So one of the top videos I've released in the last year is about getting the perfect size for your channel banner so that it shows up right on mobile, desktop, and TV. And I didn't know it when I released it, but apparently this is a major pain point for people because it's probably gotten more like, thank you, you saved me comments that I've ever seen on a video on any channel.

32:01But it is one of those things where you can Google the dimensions, you know, Canva has them, but then they're wrong. And so you need to see it. So I don't know, Justin, with your channel, have you been thinking more about what can we show rather than just tell? Yeah, I think it comes down to the showing and the sharing for sure. And I think if people want quick answers to things, they can get that from AI or will be getting that from AI if they're not there yet. The piece that they're not getting is the human piece. Well, I want to hear how Jerry not only gives me the sizes, but how should I build it?

32:30What colors should I use? What's going to stand out? What works best on TV versus something else? So they're getting more in there. They're getting Jerry in that video than just the quick Google answers. This is the resolution, the size for it. And I think that's the piece is to make it human, share your thoughts and opinions, because there's no one else that has that. There's no one else with your personality, your experience, your beliefs, your frameworks and all of this stuff. And that's the piece. That's the connection piece. So it's moving. It's the opposite from AI slop. Already, people are burning out.

33:03I'm burning out. Whenever I see something on AI slop or I can tell there's an AI voiceover, I'm out. I want to hear how a human did something. So I think we're only going to be more and more on that side of things. When I saw this, when they first announced they were testing this, this Ask YouTube feature, I started thinking first about that. But I would love to know your thoughts. Obviously, the algorithm has gotten so smart the last couple of years. We don't need exact keywords anymore. What does YouTube SEO look like going forward? One thing I saw somebody say is now instead of sending someone to the link in the description, that are verbally saying the website out loud, assuming it's an easy to remember URL in the video so that it's more likely to come up in chat GPT or ask YouTube or one of these different things.

33:48But like, what do you think the future of YouTube SEO is going? Like, what are you thinking about you and your brother with your channel? Yeah, I think it kind of hit this place a little while back where the keywords, you know, you used to have to get them in the right order and you're looking at search volumes and all of this stuff. And that stuff hasn't totally gone away. like we do still look at that to a point we want to gauge demand like is this something that's worth making instead of throwing something out and hitting and hoping but the the piece that has only become more and more relevant for optimization is the content itself so youtube knows everything about that video not only is it listening to or seeing what's been said like transcribing it it's been doing that for a while and that was a big shift forward or a big shift with the how it was understanding your content but now with ai it can look at what's actually happening in it.

34:33So it's not about gaming a system with keywords and all of that kind of stuff. It's what actually happens in the video. And then the more longer the video is up, the more it learns. So what pieces of that video do people like from looking at the watch time? All right, this piece here is a really compelling piece. Maybe we'll just send people direct to that piece. So I think that's really where I see it going in terms of optimizing is you still want to be mindful of what does the viewer want? What would make it a good experience for the viewer? What are they typing into Google or to YouTube to try and find this stuff?

35:02And even if they're not typing in, what would get their attention? So that if they saw it, they're like, oh, I wasn't interested in that, but now I am. I need to click on that video. I need to find out what's happening. So it's just trying to reverse engineer that piece, but it all comes down to what would be a good viewer experience and what do people want? Yeah. One of the things that YouTube said with this Ask YouTube feature is clear chapters will help you show up in those results. Now, I tend to write chapters that are more like to get somebody to want to jump to that point in the video of more of a hook, like the biggest mistake business owners make with this or something like that.

35:38I mean, what are your thoughts around chapter strategy? Because it sounds like these are worth doing. Obviously, AI can quickly generate them for us now. What do you do with chapters? Where do you think we should be going with this? We treat our chapters like we used to treat our titles in that we are still doing almost like the research. What are the keywords and things that we could put into the chapters. And AI assists with this so much because the search side, the SEO side of Google and YouTube, it's still there. It still works. So we can still optimize for that side of it specifically in the video description with the timestamps and chapter markers.

36:13It's really a place where people can jump straight to, as you said, that section, but what would they type in to find that? If that was our own dedicated video, that section of the video, what would they type in? So we're still doing that piece where it's like, you know, zooming back. If this piece was standalone, what's the keywords? Is it titling at this or is it titling at something else based on search volumes? And the tools like vidIQ make this really easy now with their title and chapter markers, the AI tools that will help you do all of this. It's looking at search volumes to help you generate those things.

36:46So we don't need to sit there and do it all manually like we used to, but I do think they are important. And I don't rely on YouTube's own chapter markers, even though we have that enabled, I'd override it with our own and they can kind of end up as a bit of a mix between the two. This is a radical concept because like we just made the decision, Hey, we're not going to do the hard work of figuring out the chapters. We're going to let YouTube do it for us. But what I'm hearing you say is, maybe you shouldn't. I mean, the good news is AI can do this, right? I mean, like, it's not complicated to get a transcript made, get the VTT or whatever the heck they call these files, right?

37:24And have AI create the titles for you, but to optimize them for search, that is huge, right? Because every one of those little titles is something that the AI somehow can slop up, right? And when I say AI, don't just mean Gemini. I think that all the AI systems have access to that. That is a huge tip that I'm also going to be notifying my team about. Thank you, Justin. We have hooked up the MCP without going too complicated to vidIQ. So when we are bouncing around our titles and looking at the optimization, looking at search volumes and things, again, this used to be a manual thing, but we can use that same data to also generate, like put the finished video script back in.

38:06as you said, the VTT or the SRT file. Here's the video we're about to publish. Help us make some subtitles because it then knows times of what you said and when you said it. And it can then look at what are the keyword phrases and things around it. And it can still make it human readable instead of just dumping keywords in. Yeah, so just to clarify, like I know we'll use your channel, Primal Video as an example. You've been making a lot of videos lately about AI video editing, which I'm obsessed with. I'm listening to Mike's other show, AI explored, like, I just want to learn all the things. But so let's say you were making a video, like five things AI can actually edit well in a video, for example.

38:44And so in your individual titles, you would actually say what each, or in your, sorry, individual chapters, you would actually say what each one was, almost giving it away so that I didn't have to watch the video instead of - Yes. Okay. And that's more valuable, you feel like? Yeah. That's where we've landed after testing this for a long time. But obviously there's no stable ground at all here. It's all changing all the time. So with anyone on your own individual channel, I would do a test with a handful that are more of, I don't want to say clickbaity, but they're more engagement based. If I saw it, I would click on it, but I'm not searching for it.

39:16But again, we're optimizing for search so that I want to be the one that shows up. When someone has this pain or problem or is looking for something, that we show up towards the top instead of competing with a Mr. Beast on the homepage. I'm not entertaining. I'm teaching. And I think that's the same for a lot of business owners where they can share their thoughts and opinions or whatever on something. They can talk about their products. They don't need to compete with a Mr. B. So that's where I like the search side. So for that, yeah, I would be optimizing these to be extra little fishing lines out there, hooks for people to find your content.

39:47And if it means it can get surfaced by you revealing that in the timestamps because YouTube understands the content more, it's heard you say it in the video, but it's also a direct link to that specific time. and it might help chat GPT get people on. Like it's all kind of all roads point back to them getting that answer without it being buried in some cryptic thing that they may or may not click in. So that would be my take. Okay, that's the tip. I gotta really rethink that. And I've had chapters help me show up in search for years, but at some point I was like, I don't wanna give it away, which is maybe a limiting mindset.

40:20So another thing with this, we've been talking a lot about AI and YouTube has now given us a built-in AI thumbnail generator and they're also letting us build actual custom thumbnails for YouTube Shorts. So I would love to know your take on YouTube Shorts thumbnails because once upon a time, somebody was almost never going to see it because it was just this swipable feed now. So what changed? And then are you putting thumbnails on your shorts on your channel, custom ones? Yeah, so they used to have it. When it first came out, you could upload a custom thumbnail and it was just another step. Like, you know, now we just want to upload something quick and I've got to go get a graphic designer to compete, to have something looking good.

41:00So I did like when they removed it eventually because it was, you know, they didn't look good. I would always pick a weird frame of me or something to try and get engagement. But we had to trust that, you know, YouTube wants people on the platform. So it was always like testing different ones. So am I using them? No. What I am doing is trying to pick a frame that doesn't look absolutely horrendous where I'm like mid-sentence, mid-word or something. So I'll pick something that's good enough. But to me, we don't generate a whole lot of views from shorts. So while it's something that fits our workflow of we create the one regular long form video a week and we've done one a week for 14 years now and I can repurpose some of the little nuggets and value from that as shorts, awesome.

41:46So I would go as far as like, what's the 80-20? Is you sitting there crafting and creating an amazing thumbnail image worthwhile? Maybe if someone goes to your channel page and sees it, or if it's managed to be surfaced on the other areas of YouTube. But for most shorts creators, the shorts of views are coming from people already watching a short and swiping up and seeing the next one. So I don't think that the time payoff for that is there yet. Maybe if you've got your OCD level high and you want your channel page looking good, but most people aren't going to channel pages. They're finding you through search.

42:21They're finding you through recommendations. I'm not sure if you've seen the same with your channel as well, Jerry, but the amount of views and things from a channel page is probably the lowest it's ever been. Well, I run my channel a lot like yours, focus on long form, occasionally pull a clip that might make a short. But I can tell you as a consumer, we all know we each have a different experience, right? When we log into YouTube. As a consumer, I'm seeing a whole shelf of shorts on youtube.com before I even scroll. So that's where they're showing up. Because I think it was, it used to, like you had to go to somebody's channel to ever see it, but now it's showing up there.

42:55So if shorts were important, you talk, you know, we've talked a lot about how important it is to have a thumbnail that people are going to click. I mean, at that point, does it become worth it to make them for the shorts? It could, and I think it's still so new. And I'm really not seeing many people utilize it yet. But also that there is this whole thing of ads in shorts now. and also AI generated content. And if for me, I'd rather see something that is more raw, more real and go, ah, that's interesting. So I would make sure that the frame I'm picking had captions or something on. So same as we were talking before, I knew what it was going to be without needing to read a little title or something for it because titles on shorts are either non-existent in some places or they're very truncated and chopped off so you can't say much.

43:38So I would still be mindful of what that frame is, but I don't think we're going to go as far as creating a dedicated thumbnail, even though AI can make them now relatively quickly as well? Well, I will tell you what I'm doing for Press Start the Road to 3000. I'm having AI go through and pick the shot of me that is the best shot and then put a little title, you know, like how you can do that with Instagram or whatever, like a little title at the top baked into it. So it's still actually from the video, but I'm controlling, not the baked in caption, but the actual title is right there. so at least I have something.

44:14And I feel like that isn't hard to do if you know how to train AI to do something like that. I think that might be the obvious easy step for a lot of people, frankly. Yeah, I think that's a good mix of both because it's still you. It's not a bait and switch where we've got a really high polished thing. Like, yeah, I like that. Yeah, well, and just to mention too, I mentioned the shorts on the homepage. I'm seeing in them in search results too. So that's another opportunity. Again, if shorts are important to your business strategy. Well, as you saw, Justin, both Mike and I were taking notes today.

44:44This has been a fantastic conversation. Thank you for joining us. People want to learn more about you or explore working with you. Where do you want to send them? I can head to primalvideo.com or to our YouTube channel, Primal Video. And yeah, thanks very much for having me back on. Justin and Jerry, thank you so much for being on the show. Hey, if you missed anything, we took all the notes for you over at socialmediaexaminer.com slash 742. If you're new to the show, be sure to follow us. If you've been a listener for a while, we would love a review. and do check out my other show, the AI Explored podcast.

45:11This brings us to the end of the Social Media Marketing Podcast. I'm your host, Michael Stelzner, and I was joined by my co-host, Jerry Potter. I'll be back with you next week. I hope you make the best out of your day and may your marketing keep evolving. The Social Media Marketing Podcast is a production of Social Media Examiner.

45:33hey before you go we just announced our first speakers for social media marketing world 2027 two dozen practitioners every single one personally recruited every session pitch free go see the lineup and grab your discounted tickets right now at socialmediamarketingworld.info