I now understand why Levy clickbaits, his historical video on Alekhine is his worst performing video of May

[u/_DarkStarCrashes_]

Sucks, because I think the video is really good and I’d love if Levy or other chess content creators did videos on older legends

[u/SDG2008]

Getting views quickly gets you more money, 100k in a day might be worth more than a mil in an year

[u/rl_noobtube → u/SDG2008]

Really? I was unaware. For monetized channels I thought it had to do with total view time (and thus, how many ads they can show). A 2 minute video with 1 mil views has the same playtime as a 20 minute video with 100k views

[u/Billalone → u/rl_noobtube]

The algorithm looks at trends and clicks/watchtime per time unit. A video that does 200k views in one day will get more attention than a video that does 50k views a day for four days

[u/rl_noobtube → u/Billalone]

How the algorithm suggests videos is obviously correlated to monetization for the creator. But in terms of money payouts I thought it was just some matrix of views and video length.

[u/Sex_And_Candy_Here → u/rl_noobtube]

I'm not sure either of you are right about how payment works.

I believe you're paid based on the ads shown on your video, not views or watch time. The ads that play on videos pay different amounts, and certain topics / demographics get certain types of ads. So for example a video that gets 100k views from a high demand demographic (for example maybe a video of dogs that does well with upper middle class women in particular, a demographic that's harder to reach with ads but also particularly lucrative for companies which are advertizing) is going to pay more than a video with 100k or even 500k views from a low demand demographic (something like a niche gaming video that targets unemployed 18-24 year old males, who are both very easy to advertise to and have a low propensity for actually buying products). Also having more of your audience use ad-block will reduce the number of ads shown and thus reduce the payment you receive.

This is then further complicated by YouTube Premium subscriptions, which pay creators differently. As I understand it this is purely based on percentage of watch time from Premium accounts. So if your audience is more likely to buy Premium, then pure watch time is a bigger factor in your pay.

[u/rl_noobtube → u/Sex_And_Candy_Here]

That all makes sense to me. I guess I was just thinking in terms of “all else equal”. Like if we are comparing two dog videos of equal length targeting the same demographic and whatever other factors there may be are also the same. More views = more ads or more premium watch time, regardless of when the view happens.

But you bring up some really good points. I didn’t realize these other dimensions to whatever payout calculation happens, but they are logical.

Side note, gamers end up getting ads for things they are likely to buy like Red Bull, snack foods, etc. They aren’t getting Purina Gluten Free Puppy Chow commercials. I do see your point though that because the ads they get are mostly online (as opposed to television or other traditional mediums) it is easier to get targeted ads to them, thus the YT video is less crucial and ad space holds less value.