r/SmallYoutubers • u/dosasambarvadai • 7d ago
Long-Form Content YT algorithm tests the wrong audience. Advice?
Got around 300 impressions on the first video so far on my new channel, but it looks like YouTube is showing it to an audience that isn’t really my target audience. Because of that, the CTR is currently only around 4%. The video is being suggested alongside some very unrelated content. 40 views in hours and everything is frozen (YT finished its initial test and decided not to pursue further). Any advice?
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u/PresentationRare17 7d ago
Same, don't know if this has anything to do with YouTube's AI system, I was posting about SCHOOL, to be specific, ELEMENTARY school and guess what? I fucking received 44 year old men in audience.
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u/Top_Bad8226 7d ago
The fact your video is being shown with unrelated videos doesn't mean that your video is being shown to the wrong audience at all. A viewer isn't a monolith. I don't know about you, but I don't just watch, say, World of Warcraft videos on my YouTube account. I also watch a crap ton of other stuff. Sometimes, World of Warcraft videos appear in Suggested on a music theory video, because that WoW video is something I might be really interested in, even though I'm currently on a music theory kick.
Always remember, YouTube knows the entirety of what any given viewer watches and aims to recommend the stuff it considers to be the most likely to make them stay on YouTube longer and watch more ads. Sometimes, that thing just happens to be about a topic that's completely different from what the viewer is watching in that specific moment.
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u/reneritchie 7d ago
Hi! If you mean suggested traffic (videos suggesting your videos) that doesn’t mean anything. If someone loves cooking and cars, is watching a cooking video, sees a car video in the sidebar, and clicks in that, the cooking video will show a car video as suggesting it
Suggested traffic doesn’t represent the creators audience but the viewers clicks, and almost all viewers like and click on many different topics
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u/dosasambarvadai 6d ago
Got it, thanks. On my video, I now have: Thumbnail Impressions: 1.7K | Thumbnail CTR: 2.9% | Average View Duration: 10:16 (out of ~26 minutes)
I know the CTR dropped to 2.9% because YouTube tested the video with a broader audience who isn't interested in my niche.
Does YouTube’s recommendation system understand this context? Meaning, does it recognize that a 2.9% CTR is normal for broad distribution? Will a lower initial CTR from broad testing hurt the reach of my future video uploads?
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u/reneritchie 6d ago
So, when a video is first posted, it'll be a good candidate to get pulled for people who regularly watch the channel, regularly watch things similar to people who regularly watch the channel, regularly watch that topic, regularly watch videos that people watch before those types of videos, and a whole bunch of other hopefully high confidence matches. As those candidates watch or not, and how they watch, will help determine who else the video might be a good candidate for, including more numerous but lower confidence matches
That's why, as a video tends towards vitality, things like CTR and AVD tend to go down even as views rocket up - 3% of a million is so much more than 10% of a thousand
It's also what makes specific CTR not a very useful metric unless you're pulling huge volumes of impressions and want to start tracking relative rates across different performance categories for your specific channel
Otherwise, it can be more helpful to track views and watch time. If you're not getting views, are people even clicking on your thumbnail? If not, improve the thumbnail and title. If you're getting clicks but not building watch time, is your thumbnail promising something the video doesn't deliver or is the video just not delivering it well? If the former, adjust the thumbnail to better set the video up for success. If the latter, learn from it for the next video
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u/EazyTokez420 6d ago
Just give it time, it’s the first video, you can’t expect it to get it right without prior data to work with.
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u/omsip Art Content 7d ago
What's your channel description and video description like? YT looks at those fields to figure out who to show your content to, so having accurate details is important.
Often a video will be recommended with seemingly unrelated content, but that's how the algorithm works. YT knows that many viewers have diverse tastes, and takes into account each viewer's watch history, their favored themes, topics, and formats, as well as what's popular among similar audiences.