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TubeTalk: Your YouTube How-To Guide
Why YouTube View Counts Just Got Weird
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Your analytics say one thing, your gut says another and suddenly YouTube is counting a “view” from the first frame. We dig into the new YouTube view count change that expands exposure-based views to long form videos, podcasts, and live streams, and we’re honest about what we got wrong when we first predicted the impact. What looked like a tiny shift at first turned into something way bigger: videos showing massive view totals while engaged views tell a very different story.
We talk through why this happens, from autoplay previews on the homepage to simple hover behaviour on desktop that can trigger playback without intent. Then we get practical: which numbers still matter for creators trying to improve? We explain why engaged views, watch time, and retention remain the most truthful signals for content performance and monetisation, and why inflated views can feel like “empty calories” when revenue does not move. We also unpack how this change can make click-through rate harder to interpret unless you’re comparing it to the right view metric.
Finally, we zoom out to the bigger implications for YouTube creators and brands: who benefits most from exposure-based counting, why larger channels may see a bigger lift due to homepage distribution, and how sponsorship conversations might change once advertisers realise “views” now includes passive exposure. If you care about YouTube analytics, creator strategy, and making decisions you can trust, this one will hit home. Subscribe for more weekly creator talk, share this with a friend who lives in Studio, and leave a review with your take on the new view count.
The View Count Shock
SPEAKER_01This video has 33,000 views, but psych? No, it doesn't. It has 14,000 engaged views. The one of ten thing is now like I don't really need this anymore. Now we're just playing with monopoly money.
SPEAKER_02The primary number should be the engaged view. I more care about what I'm trying to do when I'm spending time going into studio figuring out what I did right and wrong. That's what it that's what it's about.
We Admit We Were Wrong
SPEAKER_02Hey, welcome back to the only podcast that isn't afraid to admit when we're wrong. And I'm gonna tell you something right now. We were kind of wrong, and we're gonna talk about it. And I wasn't the only one wrong. Dan, you were here being wrong as well. I didn't realize this was the only podcast. What other podcasts do you know will admit that they're wrong? No one does that. I I guess they don't listen to all of them. But yeah, I can't think of one that would admit that. Never. Never. There's some big ones out there that never admit they're wrong, if you know what I'm saying. Anyway, uh, if you're new here, we're here to help you grow a YouTube channel and sometimes give you advice that actually works, and sometimes we tell you something that's not exactly true. Well, it's not as bad as that. We had good intentions. No, we had good intentions. We thought one thing and then we found out another. So, for those of you who don't know, the way YouTube counts views has changed. And most of you probably know by now, but what we didn't know was what that actually would look like. And that was supposed to happen on Monday of this week. The way we're recording this, we're recording this on um the 27th, which is a Thursday. Supposed to take place on the Monday of this week. And it kind of did. And it largely followed with what we thought what would happen, which was almost no difference in views. Like almost no difference. And for those who don't know what the rules are of how this accounts, we're gonna go ahead and real quick quick replay
YouTube Switches To First Frame
SPEAKER_02Renee Ritchie talking about the views uh and how they're counted uh starting now. So let's watch uh this YouTube short about that, and then we'll talk uh about what happened since.
SPEAKER_00Exposure-based model for views across all formats, meaning a view will now be counted the moment a video begins to play from the very first frame. Hello, insiders, I'm Renee Richie, a longtime creator now working at YouTube. And here's what's up. Last year, YouTube moved to an exposure-based model for shorts views. This year, starting August 24, YouTube will be expanding that model to long form, podcasts, live streams, all formats. YouTube is doing this to ensure consistency across the platform, to make sure every moment of connection between creator and audience is captured, and so that there's no confusion or fragmentation about what a view actually means. Creators can use this updated, standardized count to better understand views across formats and to better communicate the full scale of audience impact to brand partners and sponsors. And viewers will know when they see a view count, it's all based on the same model from that first frame. All new videos uploaded after the changes on August 24, 2026 will show the updated first frame view count. All videos uploaded prior to the change will keep their existing view count up until the change. Historical view totals will not be updated retroactively, but following the change, new views on those videos will follow the updated first frame count. To compare performance more consistently before and after the change, creators can use the engaged views metric in YouTube Studio.
SPEAKER_02All right. That's kind of the 30,000 foot. He said a couple of things that I didn't catch the very first time where he talked about how you can tell like sponsors and stuff uh things, and then that viewers would know that it all means to say viewers don't know any of this. I'm gonna tell you something right now, and Renee knows this. He's just being told to say things. Uh, viewers don't know nothing. I have a viewer who was on one of my videos. I timestamp my videos. You think everyone knows about timestamps? There's little things at the bottom of the video. Didn't know about timestamps. I had to literally tell him and teach him how to use timestamps on a YouTube video. If a person doesn't know how to use timestamps, which are visibly there, they're not gonna know that an engaged view, they're not gonna know. So what he's saying there is, and again, I don't think this is Renee saying this, that they'll know that the views are kind of the same across both. They didn't know that to begin with, they probably don't care. So I I don't agree that that's a good excuse for this. And Renee, again, and and I'm a friend with Renee,
Why The Numbers Suddenly Doubled
SPEAKER_02this isn't his choice. He is the the, you know, he is the public-facing uh person for YouTube. I don't like this change. I I like a lot of things that YouTube does. I after today, and we're gonna get into that in a minute. I genuinely do not like this change because it makes things so difficult. Now, here's what I mean. So when we first talked about it, Dan, I think your prediction was what, 20% more? Is that what you thought?
SPEAKER_01Or I my prediction based off nothing but vibes, and I said that at the time, was I think it'll be a 20% increase, a di a 20% difference between uh views and engaged views.
SPEAKER_02That would mean if you had 100 views before this change, you'd have 120 after. And on Monday, when this allegedly went uh went active, that's kind of what we saw. It was minuscule.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I almost think it was 20%. It was it was tiny. Yeah, it was very tiny. I'm like, oh, sweet, no sweat. And that it made sense too.
SPEAKER_02So something happened today. Don't know why or what, but it has changed everything. So I'm gonna show you kind of a couple things. Number one, I'm gonna show you a tweet by a content creator that uh uh follows me and I follow on uh Twitter, uh Vadim. And he shows a video where he's showing uh how many views and engaged views he has. So it starts here where he and again, if you listen to the audio only podcast, you're gonna watch a YouTube video for this. And this is the views, and then he hits engaged views, and then boom, look how far down it dropped. It went from 20 something thousand to twelve thousand. So his quote, real views are 12,000, his engaged views are 23,000. He woke up looking at his analytics thinking, we did it, we we got this great video out. And instead, when he digged a little dive in, uh deep diving, he found out that's not the case. And that happened to us. Let's let's look at what happened to us. So this is as of you know, a couple hours in. This video has 33,000 views, but psych, no, it doesn't. It has 14,000 engaged views. That is double, over double the amount of views. This is not what we thought was gonna happen.
SPEAKER_01No, and we should have, I guess, because this is what happened with shorts. When they did with the short with this with shorts, it was basically double the view count for non-engaged views, which made sense because shorts' main distribution funnel is the swiping. So you can't get around accidentally watching shorts you don't want to see and before you land on a short you want to see. So it made sense. But the homepage, what are you all doing? Right turn off autoplay. I can't even use the YouTube app with autoplay on. I turned it off ages ago because it's I'm trying to look at the thumbnails, I'm trying to pick what to what to play, and then it just starts moving. I don't want to know, no, no, I don't want that. I turned off autoplay and I thought that was like a normal thing to do, but apparently no. Everybody has autoplay, and then on desktop, what are you doing with your mouse cursors? Where have those things been? Just dragging them around, like wee! What are you doing to us? We're window shopping, we're window shopping.
SPEAKER_02I'm a window shop for my videos. You don't window shop for your videos?
SPEAKER_01Not like that. Are you sure? Maybe you do and you don't realize it. Maybe I do. I don't know. It's just funnier to crash out about it. I'm I'm just I'm shocked. I did not expect it. I did not expect it to be double uh just like shorts. In some cases, I've seen it where it's like three times more. You know, the engaged views are three times less than like the the views. Okay. It's not gonna be confusing forever because eventually we'll make ten videos, so we're one of ten will correct. Eventually, this will be months later down the road. Uh it'll just be used to it, I guess. But I'm always gonna dig for that number. I'm always gonna dig for that number.
SPEAKER_02I think it's it's the artist and it's the creator in me that's bothered the most about this. There will be inevitably someone in the comments goes, my number went up, so what? Why is that a bad thing? Um, I don't know that it's a bad thing per se. It's just something that I do not like because it does not give me, in my opinion, my personal opinion, an accurate view of who's actually watching my videos. Uh you gotta remember that it says from first frame. So if you you know mouse over, which you can do very easily on the homepage, and it starts to autoplay and you mouse off of it. Did you really watch my video? I brought this up in in a previous podcast. Did you really watch my video? Should I get credit for that? Does that even mean anything? Is it meaningful for me that you saw one frame of a 10-minute video? No, for me personally, it doesn't. I don't even want to know about it. I don't want to know about it. Um, and as of the recording now, we we are not sure that it's showing this to the public yet. Now, having said that, YouTube does slow down the the first day views on videos that have a lot of views anyway. Like this always trails behind a little bit, but we've seen it, we were seeing it trail by a lot today, and we're unsure if that's rolled out publicly or how that works. Only thing we can say is at least today, and even on my personal channel, uh I'm seeing views go up on videos that I either know are dead or or are not performing at the rate that I I see. For some people, it will be encouraging, and I don't want to rain on those people's parade. But at least for now, it feels painful because it doesn't feel real. If it was real, we would be rejoicing. The algorithm has changed, and now everyone gets views because you know you've worked hard and all that, but that's just not the way it works. These are people who don't know who you are, don't know what your video was about, and you have to ask yourself, is that a real view?
SPEAKER_01Your watch time isn't going to change, right? And if you're monetized, your revenue is not going to go up. Right. You know, those cowards will never put an ad on that first frame, okay? As much as we want them to in this case. So, no, like this isn't this. I know for a creator who's not monetized, this could be exciting. And yeah, like you, I don't want to take that away, but I'm gonna, because once you get monetized, it's just a bit of a different ball game. And you want to understand, like, okay, here's what I've been thinking about all day. Like, YouTube took the time early on to invent a
Autoplay And Hover Views Problem
SPEAKER_01system that they felt comfortable with in terms of what counted as a view. Someone had to sit down in a boardroom with a bunch of other people that were really smart and say, okay, we know that a view shouldn't be more than just when someone clicks on the video and then clicks away. Like, that's the is that a view? They they already decided this for us years ago. And that was the right decision, I guess. And they probably would probably say, Well, at the right time, that was the right decision, and things have changed. I don't know what's really changed because you know, I can't. If I if I drive by an art gallery and I look at the window as I'm driving by, I didn't just view 20 paintings, I just drove by an art gallery. But now the way it works, they're they're saying, No, you just you just saw and enjoyed 20 paintings. Is it how don't you feel cultured? Like, no, like so that that is I think the old system was correct. I I respectfully agree with you. I I don't like this change, respectfully. I I know YouTube's probably gonna hear it from people who have more choice words, but I I don't. I like to know when someone took the time and gave me an actual chance, not not swiped by really quick and not even not even acknowledging the title of my video or who made it. I want to know and I want that number reflected in plain English when someone actually gave me a chance. And I use that data, the view signal being the first one I look at for determining whether or not a video is successful. I use that data to make decisions. I know I still have it, I know I can go digging for it, but for my own convenience, if you want to make the public view counts do whatever, that sucks for me, but fine. Like, I for my own convenience in the dashboard, I want those numbers to be accurate so I can make good decisions on the fly quickly. I want to make videos for you. I want to put more videos on your platform. And if you're gonna slow me down, like that's that's unfortunate.
SPEAKER_02And the other thing is we're surrounded by YouTube content creators every day, whether it be on the podcast channel, our main channel, or our customers, our vidIQ customers. We talk to creators all the time. And one thing that was said was that that YouTube said they had heard from creators that they wanted this change to make the views in line with shorts. I have never, in the history of all the people I've ever talked to, ever talked to a single creator or heard from another creator that they wanted a change where their views from the long form matched their views from the short form after the view change happened. I've never heard that. I'm not saying that YouTube didn't hear that from somebody. Maybe someone said something somewhere and they did some type of uh survey, and for whatever reason, they again, this is kind of like a confirmation bias. You bring this idea up in a survey, and someone's like, Well, I never thought of that. Sure. Right? You know what I mean? Like that's but to me, that's not the same thing as someone going, YouTube, this needs to happen. That's like I've I'm giving you some new things that you never thought about. Would you say yes to this? And someone might go, Oh, yeah, to make my views go up, sure. But when the actuality happens, and I don't know if people are as outraged about this as us. Maybe, maybe we're just the old men uh waving our fists at the sky. I'd love to see what people say in the comments of this video. But for me, um I I don't get it. They did it, I understand why they did it for shorts, and I'm not even hating on the shorts because they have a competitor, TikTok, Reels, Instagram, you know, all that stuff where their numbers maybe didn't look as good as the others, so they want to they want to make it an even playing field. Yeah, let's go ahead and count them the same way that they do. There is no legitimate competitor to long form on YouTube that has any view counts, period. End of story. You could argue there's no competitor, period, because the watch time for YouTube is crushing things like Netflix. So there was no need to do this on that, none at all. And I feel like I don't know that this is, and I would say it probably isn't in a way to soften the monetization blow. I don't think it does it. I don't think it does that, and I don't think that's why they did it. I think they legitimately, a whole bunch of people got into a room and thought that this was the right move. But I would argue that most of the ones that had the exact pull that could actually make it happen are not actually creators or have never
Why Creators Need Engaged Views
SPEAKER_02actually uploaded or done any significant uploads on YouTube. Because had they done that, my guess is they probably wouldn't have made this change, uh, in my opinion. But in a year from now, I might be looking like a fool because everyone might love it, because everyone's views are up, which to me, if everyone succeeds, no one succeeds. But uh yeah, but here's the other thing we started to figure it out as we started to look into the numbers. I believe this will be an instance where the rich get richer and the poor stay poorer. And here's what I mean by that. And I and Dan knows what I'm about to say because I talked about it in a meeting earlier today. Um, we're seeing a huge numbers uh difference between you know our engaged views and regular views, and that other channel I showed you is like a million subscriber channel where our views are like sometimes double or triple. You're not necessarily going to see that as a smaller creator, even on my channel, um, it's not that big. It's it's big-ish. It's you know, it's a percentage of something you can see, but it's not that big. It's not doubling or tripling. And the reason for this is because as a bigger channel, we are surfaced either on home pages more often or sometimes search, and that's where you can hover over and get that, you know, that extra second clip. So my expectation is smaller creators are gonna see a smaller impact, larger creators are gonna see a large impact, and that's what we're already seeing. Larger papers are gonna creators are probably gonna love it then. It's like, oh, cool. I went from one million views per video to three. Like, cool, cool story, bro. Um, but for everyone else, it may not be as big of a deal. So I don't think there's gonna be an outcry about this at all. It's just us, me and you. We're fighting the good fight, I think, Dan.
SPEAKER_01I I I'm not on Twitter anymore, so I don't know how people are reacting. I I know the discords that I'm in with creators, they're certainly not happy about this, but I don't think they're grabbing pitchforks or anything. They are lamenting, they're very annoyed because, like me, they're like, hey, this number's hard to find now, you know. I just want to see the real number. So it is there's something, there's something about like for my own channel, like my next upload. I'm thinking about how it's gonna be a probably a one of ten, assuming it's uh, you know, comparable to my other videos, and how I'm gonna get excited for like a second, and I'm gonna go, oh, all right. I have to upload nine more videos for this to level off, you know. And again, I know that's all temporary, but it's not this isn't helpful, and I don't understand, I just don't understand why. I know why, I know what they're saying, I know what the uh the the line is that they're giving us about consistency, but what doesn't make sense to me, if you're gonna say consistency is the reason we're doing this, uh how is it that you can tie my click-through rate to engaged views while also hiding engaged views in all in the name of consistency? It doesn't make sense. I don't get it. That's not consistent. My click-through rate now has nothing to do with the the view count that is easy to see. I have to go find the real view count. So then my click-through rate makes more sense.
SPEAKER_02Uh I would I would screen share this Discord I'm in, this YouTube Discord I'm in, but I can't because it's not the vid IQ Discord. Maybe I should look in the vid IQ Discord and share that so people can check that out. But I'm in this other uh YouTube Discord and I'm seeing the the back and forth, and um some people don't care, and some people do, and then some people are arguing about that sponsors won't understand the change. They won't immediately, but they will eventually. Um, and I feel like the people that are like they won't ever know is like you probably don't get very many sponsorships then. Uh you know what I mean? And and the back and forth is really interesting. Um so both people are both sides of this are um some are saying they don't care, they like views. Someone said literally, I like views. Like, okay. And then the other side's like, yeah, this is this is just a lot of nothing. Um and then someone said, Well, all the other platforms are doing this, but again, YouTube has no there's no one pressuring YouTube on long form. There's nothing out there. Go go to what is it, Venmeo, Vimeo, or is that even still around?
SPEAKER_01I I know it might come up with the comments. Uh someone probab will probably bring up Billy Billy because apparently they're going global now. Uh they're they're like the YouTube app for China. So they're expanding globally. I don't know if they'll be able to capture a market share in America, but people weren't worried about TikTok when it first came around. And here we are. It's on like everybody's phones. So it could, maybe, maybe. Uh, and I I actually wondered if this
Rich Get Richer With Homepage Surfacing
SPEAKER_01was part of it. If maybe because they saw the the writing on the wall with Billy Billy, they were like, well, let's get ahead of this now for long form because we did it with TikTok and it helped level the playing field. We'll make our numbers look a lot better with this new competitor coming up, you know, soon. Maybe. I again, all I can do is put on tinfoil hats all day long because we don't they're not gonna ever admit that.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I don't know. Uh definitely want to hear from the audience on this. So definitely go down in the comments, tell us what you think. Uh, we know a lot of the creators that are listening to the podcast are smaller creators, so we definitely want to hear what you think. And also tell us if you're seeing an impact on your videos. It's possible that you might not see any impact, especially if you weren't getting any views before. You probably are still not getting any. Um, but I'm sure I'm positive some of you are seeing a difference. Um, some people are seeing a small difference, some people are seeing a large difference. And we kind of want to know where that line is. By the time this podcast goes out, we also would have had a long form video on the main VidIQ channel about this. But as we're recording this, that has not gone up. And I just feel like the conversation is needed. YouTube loves to hear like the feedback from the creators. I don't think that they have any problem with you know what we're saying or anything. We're not we're not coming down because YouTube is still the best platform, in my opinion, to create on for so many different reasons. It is heads and tails above everything else, and it is just such a such a great platform to be on. There are things that are annoying and sometimes frustrating, but at the end of the day, man, it's you freaking too, and no one else. It is just yeah, that's what it is.
SPEAKER_01I I do agree with you there. Um, I wanted to ask, just based on feedback, have you been getting surveys from YouTube lately? Lately, not as much as I used to.
SPEAKER_02I think I still get them every once in a while, though.
SPEAKER_01That's where I'm at, too. And I I felt like I used to get them on like a monthly basis, and they were asking a lot of very interesting questions. I never answered a survey that had anything to do with view counts in this way that I remember, but I usually try and answer them because I appreciate being asked, right? And I haven't seen them in so long, and it just it is a bit confounding. Like it's been so long since I've seen a survey, and I know people have like pinged them about other recent updates that have come out, and I just haven't seen much of a response. And I don't know about you, but I do I do wonder like, are like, is this feedback not like for these particular updates? Are they just like, I don't want this feedback? Like they they feel like they have to do this for some reason, and they're just like, we're not gonna survey this, we're not gonna ask, we're not gonna respond, we're just gonna leave it alone. That's how it that's the vibe of these ones, because I'm just I'm seeing people bring it up, and I and the responses are usually like, let's just clarify a little bit more. We'll clarify it harder, but we're not going to roll anything back.
SPEAKER_02Rolling back takes time. They they need to uh they want data, they want to roll up data, not like, yeah, I get that. They rarely roll things back, though, although they have taken big things down. YouTube stories, something I wish they had kept completely gone. Um, I think YouTube stories would be ironically really hidden right now. I think they would do very well right now. Heck, bring them back, YouTube. What's going on? Um, so I don't think they'll ever roll this back because at the end of the day, people will eventually forget and forgive, and they don't care uh because the number goes up. It's it would be different if they counted them differently and numbers went down. That would be a different story. People would definitely Definitely have a fit about that, and you would definitely see pushback, and you would definitely, without a shadow of a doubt, see it roll back. Um, hiding view counts, which we've talked about for a long time. I think that they could eventually go there someday. I I don't have a problem with it. I almost wish they would. If they ever did that, 100% will get pushed back. 100% will never be able to keep it going because it'll be too controversial. So there's just a bunch of things that could definitely get rolled back. I do not see this in any shape, and again, I could be wrong again. Listen, there's a whole podcast about how we're wrong. I could be wrong again. Uh, I do not ever see that happening. I think this is where we're at. We just have to get used to it. The number goes up, so yay. Um, but it definitely for me feels like empty calories. You know what I mean?
SPEAKER_01That is the thing. I think we said this about shorts as well. Like shorts we found made subscribers a little more meaningless because people just kind of click the button and they don't interact with your long form content. It doesn't necessarily seem to raise the floor of your shorts, if that makes sense. Like, you know, you still have to make really good shorts, whether people watch because they're subscribed or not. Um, it's kind of felt like the subscriber number was starting to feel like empty calories at that point. And that's how views feel. And I guess it's just a little disheartening when I think about all those different updates now and put them all together. And it's like the numbers start to become really meaningless. And before I was giving them a lot of weight, and
Sponsors Surveys And Platform Motives
SPEAKER_01maybe that's on me. Maybe I shouldn't be doing that, maybe I shouldn't give them so much weight, but they they matter. Like we have an entire YouTube channel dedicated to how do you grow on YouTube and like how do you look at these numbers and make good decisions for your channel. And it obviously makes our jobs harder because we're in that unique kind of niche about that specific topic. But I do think it will make the the jobs of day-to-day creators a little more confusing if they're basing decisions off of metrics that like don't quite align with reality. You would argue that if views, if if the views, like just the ones that the new ones go up in the same way across all your videos, then that's still valuable data because one video is still going to perform better than the other, but it's still murky to me. Like it's not the real number. You have to go digging for that. And I just think good data is important, and I I really I really value good data. And they've they've conditioned me to believe that this view count is not good data over the last two decades. They they made this call ages ago, and now they've kind of reversed course, and I it's like, well, but you you you got me on the hook for this other way of thinking, so it's just hard, man. It's it's hard to like change the entire way I look at this platform. They they made that decision, and now I feel like they're going back on it at a time where an entire generation has has grown up with YouTube and the views being what they are.
SPEAKER_02I remember it was an interesting thing on on Twitter one time, uh Todd Boupre, who helps uh run a large portion of what happens on the algorithm and and the viewer kind of experience. I remember there was a discussion about um like what analytics are the most important ones, and he he eventually said, you know what, the only thing that really matters is views. Views tell you they wrap everything up into all the analytics go into the one thing. Are you getting more views? Really, I think it comes down to impressions, but views I I understand, people understand views, right? So it's ironic that now that's almost like, are you still sure about that? Because you can get a whole bunch of views of people never watching your video because they just moused over, because they're like, you can clickbait them into mousing over. So that's a different type of clickbait where you know to get someone in and click and and and engage is one thing, but for someone to just go, is this really what I think it is? Oh no, it's not. It's almost like you didn't even get the view. They just want to make sure you weren't lying to them, and maybe you were lying to them. And now, but you got that view anyway. Now that becomes something that's a a false positive of what you should get, what you're getting. I think what they need to do is surface it definitely in the analytics differently. Uh, the primary number should be the engaged view, because that's all we care about. It's what monetization is built off of, it's what all these things are built off of. The the other view is not, and even like monetization for short, same thing. Like it has to be engaged view. So while you have this kind of um empty calorie view thing, uh, I don't want it to be surfaced to me. I don't care. If you want to surface it publicly, fine, whatever. But to me, as the creator, as I'm trying to make decisions, I don't want that number. I don't care about it, I don't want it. Uh, and I think most creators, if they really truly understand what they're trying to do when they're in the studio, wouldn't want it either. Um, you can have again, you can have it for social proof on the outside, whatever. I actually don't even care about that. I more care about what I'm trying to do when I'm spending time going into studio figuring out what I did right and wrong. That's what it that's what it's about.
SPEAKER_01I that's I'm in completely agreement. I I kind of feel like the one of ten thing is is now like I don't really need this anymore. Yeah, you know, weird. That's that's like one of the most uh addicting things in the studio app. And maybe for that reason alone it should kind of go away. But now I really feel like, well, now it's just silly. Now we're just playing with monopoly money, and I don't really need to see the the fireworks and the because I uh for at least for the next 10 videos, I know it's gonna be nonsense. And then even from there, it's like, okay, the video started off strong with 2,000 views. It's like, let me go digging to see what that really is. It's probably a thousand views, and that's silly. Like, I don't, you know. Um, the
A Better Funnel For Analytics
SPEAKER_01one good thing I will try and like say something positive about this. This is data that is still interesting in its own right. So we have uh a deeper level of understanding, if we just if we pull off all the frustration that I've that I've certainly been going off on today, a deeper level of understanding, the funnel. So we have impression, view, and engaged view. And that's kind of interesting. I in a couple days when the metrics settle on our new videos, I'm very curious to see the difference between the number of impressions a video gets and the number of new views a video gets. That is going to be kind of interesting. That kind of like shows, hey, someone saw it, they put their mouse on it, then they clicked it, and you got a real view. You know, like that's there's ways you can kind of present that data to where I'd be like, oh, that's kind of cool. My thumbnail did the thing there. You know, we could overanalyze that all day. I don't know if the the dashboard is going to like become that sophisticated with this, you know, with the impressions funnel looking like I'm imagining it. But that is one positive about this, and that's why I would say if you if you want to surface this privately to me, I am interested in the number, but it is not a reflection of the performance of my video, and I don't think it should be presented as one.
SPEAKER_02I I do want to mention something. They did kind of change something slick slickly. I think they did it today as well. Oh um, CTR impression uh impressions and stuff. Um, they've changed the name. Thumbnail impressions, thumbnail click-through rate, that was not there yesterday.
SPEAKER_01No, that was not there yesterday.
SPEAKER_02So it's very much specifically talking about thumbnail, and it's because of these changes. That was not the way it was called before. That's not what it was called before.
SPEAKER_01What about titles? What? I'm sorry. Why don't if you're gonna designate an uh if you're gonna put a number on thumbnails, then I now I'm like, okay, what about titles?
SPEAKER_02Well, they're saying it's the same, they should say title and thumbnail impressions, but you know, they just people they know that everyone talk calls it thumbnail, right? They that's what people call it. But this is this is to let you know the difference between your views, your impressions, and your click-through rate, and they put the word thumbnail there. It's a it's a small but important change. Now, by the way, it's not an actual change to what it is, it's just a and it's telling you like what it is very specifically, so you don't get confused with the other things, like the views.
SPEAKER_01Do you think they're expecting the impressions and thumbnail impressions to be so similar? Impressions meaning new views. You're you think they they're expecting the new views to be really similar to impressions, and so they had to clarify what type of impressions maybe. That's curious. And when you click engagement, there's not we don't see engaged views there, right?
SPEAKER_02No, uh not
Comments Feedback And Closing
SPEAKER_02yet. Not yet.
SPEAKER_01I'm hoping we do.
unknownNot yet.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I didn't even catch that. That is news to me.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, no, that I found that on accident uh about an hour or so ago. Uh and uh yeah, I found it very interesting. So lots to talk about here. I hope that y'all enjoyed this. Definitely tell us in the comments what you guys think. Um it's it's a we're in a very strange time as a YouTube content creator, like they're changing so many things. Uh, it is a very interesting time. But it is not boring. One thing it is not is boring, and we'll be here every week. Please keep being boring, YouTube.
SPEAKER_01Please go back to being boring.
SPEAKER_02We could we could love that a little bit. Um, anyway, hope that y'all have enjoyed this. Of course, there'll be a link in the show notes. Oh, wait, that we're not doing I'm not interviewing Dan, so I don't have to link to his podcast channel or his channel or anything. Uh, but there'll be a new video right here you should watch, and I'll see y'all in the next one.