How Dream Averages 27 Million Views Per Video (Genius)

[00:01] that completely takes youtube by storm and last year that guy was dream in 2020 his minecraft speedruns hit view counts never before seen in gaming i mean 96 million views on a minecraft video that is pretty much unheard of now i covered

[00:17] his original story but i'll be honest even while making that video i looked at his views and thought this can't be sustained most people that blow up this quickly fall off just as fast and well looks like i was wrong a full year after

[00:31] his initial blow up dream is still regularly breaking 30 and 40 million regularly breaking 30 and 40 million views on his videos so i decided to dig a little deeper into some of the tactics he's using and it turns out dream is

[00:43] even smarter than i first thought in this video i'm going to show you the new strategy that he is using to average 27 million views per video since blowing up dream has discovered something else about youtube that keeps him ahead of

[00:56] the strange thing is on the surface it looks like this guy isn't even trying he uploads about once a month and barely even changes his thumbnails video to video but as you'll soon find out this is intentional in many ways being a

[01:11] genius youtuber isn't about exploiting the algorithm it's about hacking the audience's attention dreams minecraft videos are carefully crafted to do exactly that and through my research i've discovered he uses a three-part

[01:24] strategy with all his new uploads in just a minute i'll show you some of the borderline manipulative tactics that dream uses in his editing but we need to address something first why does dream seem to put such little effort into his

[01:38] thumbnails i mean he's used this thumbnail or some slight variation of it eight times in the last year that's half of his uploads so why is he doing this well that takes us on to part one of dream's strategy he

[01:52] has conditioned his viewers to click you see when starting out as a youtuber the to be interesting to a broad number of viewers you want to create something that gets people's curiosity even if they don't know you but as the channel

[02:07] grows this starts to shift having that broad interest is still important but recognition becomes a real factor with this thumbnail style dream generates a high rate of returning viewers because they are conditioned to

[02:20] click it's a simple formula really dream uses a certain thumbnail style the audience clicks they get a positive outcome aka a really good video and next time they are shown a very similar thumbnail they are

[02:32] conditioned to click again over time this builds up an almost subconscious association if dream was to change this thumbnail style it would break this pattern essentially he is reducing the decision time for the

[02:44] viewer when his videos are uploaded people don't even have to think they this is why you see many of the best youtube channels using a very similar format every time and yes i did just drop my own channel in there but there's

[02:59] a lot more than just recognition going on with these thumbnails for a start dream really focuses on realism the minecraft textures aren't enhanced the tall and the brightness is pretty low this literally looks like a

[03:11] screenshot from the game which is the point with so much clickbait in the minecraft niche dream doing the complete opposite is a differentiator the one area that always is bright though is dream skin even if only a little bit is

[03:24] showing in fact he purposely edits this element to be brighter than the rest of the image this is how dream brands his thumbnails it's actually very smart it would grab the attention of his regular viewers but

[03:36] it's small and subtle enough to not alienate new viewers just wouldn't work as well with people who aren't familiar with him dream also always conveys action the whole point of a speedrun video is the excitement of

[03:50] dream almost getting caught and by showing a moment just like this in the thumbnail he's giving you the perfect teaser of what's to come might be simple but it's very well thought out

[04:03] but what he does with his editing is even more impressive which takes us on to part two dream has become the watch time king so by now we know that watch time is very important for the algorithm it's basically youtube's way of telling

[04:16] whether a video is good or not the longer people stay the better the sign it's not just the case of making long videos to get more watch time the key to youtube is creating outliers let me explain if we were to take a video

[04:31] percentage viewed for an upload of this length would be about 40 of the video a good percentage viewed would be about 50 percent of the video and an outlier percent of the video and an outlier percentage viewed would be 60 or more

[04:45] the vast majority of videos will fall within this average to good category but the videos that get outlier of attention have a huge advantage with much less competition and youtube will notice this the videos might only get 10 or 20

[04:58] percent higher attention but they will get exponentially more views i think dream is one of the best examples of this principle on youtube he makes 40 minute plus videos most other minecraft channels making content this

[05:11] long are doing quite low effort let's play videos by design these are not going to get very good retention but with dream he's found a way to make a 40 minute video and you can bet he's getting outlier retention let's take a

[05:26] look at one of his latest manhunts and break this down first things first dream knows how important it is to front load the start of his videos with action the truth is if you can convince the viewer to watch the first few minutes they're

[05:38] pretty committed to the video after that point and therefore much less likely to click off dream delivers an insane amount of action right away amount of action right away he almost dies twice straightaway

[06:01] diamond armor and he spends over a minute with half a heart of health you literally can't look away from the video for the opening three minutes there is so much action dream knows once he's got past this point he can start to focus on

[06:14] building tension but he keeps the pace frighteningly quick see if you can notice one of his techniques in the next clip

[06:35] seamless cut in this clip as he turns the video actually skips forward to a much later scene you can notice as his health bar goes from half a heart to it's so subtle that unless you look for it it just feels like he's turned around

[06:49] in game dream does this to cut the boring moments and make the video feel like one continuous piece of action he does this multiple times in each video but then comes the real crowd pleaser it doesn't take much searching to realize

[07:02] doesn't take much searching to realize that dream fans love his epic mlg plays if you type in dream compilation to youtube all the results are based around his crazy game intelligence and skill dream knows this and he delivers

[07:16] armor thank you i'm gonna get extra dirt in case you need to build up and help sound now my gosh

[07:36] moments in this video the smart thing is with his editing he places them evenly apart so every six or seven minutes the viewer is deliberately given a rush of adrenaline all these previous tactics would count for nothing if dream didn't

[07:50] get his ending spot on endings can often lead to big premature falloffs in viewer attention some people drag them on too long and viewers leave ahead of time that there's nothing more the video has to offer them but dreams endings often

[08:05] have a huge climax with a twist so just when you feel the video is about to come to a conclusion something else happens in this case the hunters summon a second dragon this one final twist holds your attention to the last few seconds

[08:20] just look at this tension this is a master class from dreaming master class from dreaming [Music] [Music] is

[08:47] tactics to manipulate the viewer into paying attention but there's still one vital piece missing you might think nailing thumbnails and having good videos is the key to youtube but we haven't touched on the one thing that i

[08:59] believe sets dream apart and just before we jump into this i want to share something interesting that involves one of dream's good friends you might remember this tweet from mr beast well what if i told you today's video sponsor

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[10:05] in the video description below and now on to our final part of dream strategy he never disrupts his catalogue dream makes a very clever algorithm based decision with his content he has an endless amount of videos he could make

[10:19] scenes content or just more chilled out commentary videos but every time he makes one of these it's on a separate channel why well youtube is very momentum based minecraft manhunt is the heavy hitter on his main channel

[10:34] if he was to mix in one of these lower effort videos within his regular content it could lead to some viewer churn and damage this momentum not everyone who wants to watch manhunt videos also wants to see dream addressing his stance he

[10:48] prioritizes individual video performance and this is actually quite rare most gaming channels focus on getting out as much content as possible but then again dreams not most gaming channels and this is why he averages 27 million views per

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