YouTube Major Updates — Full Breakdown & Transcript

[00:00] YouTube has just made some of the biggest announcements of the platform's entire existence and they solve nearly every problem creators of all sizes have when trying to not just make the best videos you can, but get those videos in by your viewers. And by the end of this video,

[00:15] you'll know everything there is to know about the upcoming changes. Specifically, new art studio, more AV testing, better collabs that grow your channel, dozens of amazing live streaming features, and more tools for short creators. Time goes below, let's start with the most controversial

[00:29] that solves one of the biggest problems you are probably suffering from right now. I'm going to cover this one first, then we'll get it out of the way, and then we'll get into my personal favourite next. One of the major problems you guys have is simply not being able to understand your analytics.

[00:42] I have to explain daily that a 10% CTR on 100 impressions is not better than a 1% CTR on 100 million impressions. One of them is 10 views, the other is a million views. Which would you rather?

[00:54] could you rather? Yes, 10% is bigger, but not when in the context of impressions. Same goes with short. 100% retention sounds good, but it's a 10 second video. That is not better than the 75%

[01:06] retention on a 50 second video. Now, YouTube is adding a feature called Ask Studio, but this is powered by AI. It's a chat tool, which isn't something I'm a big fan of, but I am

[01:21] an unbiased news reporter today, bringing you facts and logic. Our studio will let you get detailed explanations and feedback on video performance, audience reaction, editing style, and so much more. My major concern with this, outside of the natural implications of AI melting human brains down into mush

[01:37] and letting me drunk by robots to fuel them in the future, is just simply misinformation. It might get the information wrong and teach you guys bad behaviors. However, YouTube has been employing tools that give you generated write-ups about videos

[01:51] and how they are performing for years in the studio, which are incredibly accurate. So it's worth giving it a chance to see how it performs. Plus, I might be okay with an AI chatbot being used here if it means less YouTube gurus can sell paid courses explaining analytics Maybe Okay let talk about the best feature coming to YouTube Studio But first we have to talk about a feature that came in 2023

[02:15] You see, back then, YouTube released the most requested feature the platform has ever had, thumbnail A-B testing, meaning you could upload three thumbnails and YouTube would tell you which was the best

[02:28] after trialing them to viewers. The best was not chosen just by click-through rate either, because that would promote clickbait behavior, obviously. Instead, the best thumbnail was actually chosen via watch time share.

[02:41] So not just what would click the most, but what also got the viewer to stick around till the end. It is a brilliant feature, it is designed carefully, and everyone I know uses it daily. But because creators such as myself are greedy little goblins for data,

[02:55] we immediately told YouTube that we wanted more, baby, give us more. Give us tidal aging testing. I want three titles, I want three thumbnails, I want to test them all together and pick the best for my audience.

[03:08] And ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls and gremlins, it's coming this year. This wasn't in the script, I don't know why I've done this. And if you don't realize how excited you should be, just to hammer this home, I use a paid tool called BitIQ, which actually tracks video title and thumbnail changes,

[03:24] and then shows me them on the side of the video. I love it, there's no second more than that, I'll link it in the description and try it for a dollar if you want. But pretty much every major creator or successfully growing creator changes their thumbnails and titles constantly within the first week or sometimes month.

[03:38] But until now, the titles had to be done manually. What am I? A guy with an arm that can type a title out and then not touch it for 12 days? I mean, yeah, but I'm too lazy for that. I don't know how else I can say this is so exciting other than admitting to you right now, I'm hard.

[03:55] What is wrong with me today? Next up, collabs. Keeping it short. But until now, when you did a collaboration on YouTube with other YouTubers, usually you get a link in the description and nobody cares. But now you can set up collaborations that let you add five other channels to a video

[04:10] as a collaborator allowing your audience to easily see everyone involved and grow your channel to a whole new group of viewers The revenue isn shared it just goes to the person who uploaded the video but I think usually one channel does the majority of the work for a collab and releases it

[04:25] That makes sense. Plus, let's be real guys, it isn't YouTube's job to organize creator collab project contracts. You should probably sort out yourself with the other creators if you wanna be paid. Getting into the live features,

[04:37] this is probably what most of you will be excited for. Vertical and horizontal streaming combined. Until now on YouTube, could stream to both vertical and horizontal, but the chat, the viewership, and overall communities were split, making the experience far from ideal. Later this year, they'll give

[04:53] the ability from a single live studio page to control and combine both into one chat, one viewership number, one stream, and most importantly, one community. This feature has been in the works for what feels like years, at least I was told about

[05:06] it a long time ago when I spoke to the head of YouTube Live, but it's so exciting to see it finally coming together and coming out for all of you guys. Because if you didn't know, even small channels can easily get 100 to 500 live viewers on a vertical format stream at any

[05:21] one time, which now would be combined into your horizontal and boost you in the algorithm. You might think this sounds a lot like Twitch's vertical feature they announced a few months ago, but there is a major difference. You see, there are hundreds of millions of people watching

[05:35] billions of pieces of vertical content daily on YouTube. And like, four people are watching vertical on Twitch. I'm sorry. It's mean.

[05:47] What if you're nervous to go live? Well, YouTube has that solved too. Practice mode. Essentially a hidden private stream that can behave exactly like a stream. You can make sure the quality, your overlay, your sound, and even just your personal comfort

[06:00] is perfect under fake stream circumstances. with potentially even a fake chat to bounce off of. This all seems small, I get it, but trust me, as a creator who helps small creators,

[06:12] this is a huge deal for a lot of you who just need a chance to make sure everything works before actually going live. Speaking of big and small, I have to admit I love the idea of members content, but it so hard to create members videos consistently even if I am only charging a dollar for them Link below they really good I think So I would love to do members live content but members live streams are so hard to market

[06:35] that scheduling an entire stream just for members won't be pushed algorithmically. To get around this, many creators love members only after parties, going live for 3 hours for their entire audience and then an hour afterwards just for members.

[06:49] The major problem here is they had to end stream entirely to start the new members one, which will destroy their attention and most importantly destroy the vibe. Until now. Soon a members flow feature will release that allows you to go live, stream to your audience

[07:03] and then at any point in the stream convert it to a members only stream without ending the stream. That means you can hype up the members only stream during your live, build viewership, new membership and then immediately give them value at the end with an exclusive stream segment.

[07:20] It's just so cheap. And when the stream is done, YouTube will soon tell you all of the best moments from that stream it thinks should become clips or shorts, and then let you either download them for editing, or immediately convert them into shorts and post them.

[07:36] You can even throw a pre-edited and uploaded intro and outro on them if you wanted before posting. By the way, this feature will be for any long-form video soon, but I just thought I'd mention it in the context of live first, because that's how most of you guys would want to use it.

[07:49] Despite the fact that I am a big proponent of not using stream clips for short format, because I think new creators learn more by planning out short format as its own original content, and then executing it from scripting, recording, and editing and releasing.

[08:04] Plus, we do have evidence that doing this will always perform better than stream clips. I'm talking millions of views consistently versus 2,000 views on stream clips. But hey, like my doctor keeps telling me, flexibility is key. So having the ability to grab your stream's best moments to include in your planned short format?

[08:20] I'm all about that. Guys, there's so much more coming as well, like YouTube's own version of Twitch bits that seems far better, 5x5 live ads to interrupt streams less, direct brand links to sponsored content that have less interruptions for viewers and creators,

[08:33] not to mention the hype feature they just fully released that I covered a few days ago. Click this video to find out how to use that to grow your channel.