The thing is, from all my own A/B testing, a face vs. no face will automatically get 20-30% more views (all else equal). And an exaggerated face, a bit more than that.
(Also, I don't mean for this to be an anti-Linus post. How he built LMG is a great story and he deserves the success he's achieved.)
I have no trouble understanding why this happens on "entertainment" videos, but this issue on technical videos seems a bit strange to me.
This is still entertainment. Technical info dressed up as entertainment, but still entertainment. Clicks reign supreme.
All videos are entertainment videos; it is a medium optimized for and driven by emotional response.
Also kudos to building your brand, I only saw the headline and already figured it might be you.. (or Linus, but it didn't say anything about /dropping/ 5k)
I think it would have a lot to do with whether the presenter is part of the video (I do 'talking head' a lot) versus off-camera (like, for example, ETA Prime, LPL, or AvE).
Like are there people out there that see a whacky face in the thumbnail and think "Oh that's a video I want to watch!" and the algorithm just got trained on that?
Or did whacky faces just resemble something (from the algorithm's perspective) that was briefly popular and then a positive feedback loop of algorithm recommends it -> gets popular -> algorithm updated to recommend it more often.
And on top of that, an expression outside of "stock photo smile" will stand out more, and if you combine that, plus a catchy title that piques your interest, and have a video that can back it up, it will do a lot better than just having a video that has good content.
I've noticed this same thing with advertisements and dancing. Why are people always dancing and singing in advertisements? Seems like people just are wired to pay attention to certain human behaviors.
Instead you are presented with a small number of options and given unlimited time to choose, and the consequence of choosing a bad video is several minutes of wasted time. I presume most people are asking themselves "do I want to watch this" and deciding "yes, this video looks interesting/entertaining/etc." Maybe if the effect were small, like 1-2% I could believe its just a slight nudge due to psychological hacking, but the reported differences in the tens of percent and the extreme importance that seems to be placed by the algorithm indicates this is a major factor in peoples' decision making process.
I doubt this is how most people's eyes actually scan a visual field. I expect there's a lot more randomness going on subconsciously, and that face-like features cause a higher subconscious dwell time.
had to click on something quickly...but that's not how Youtube works.
I think for most people it is. Scroll scroll scroll tap, all within a few seconds.
When you're only presented with a tiny bit of information, it doesn't take long to evaluate a decision. A few seconds is a long time. No one, at least to my knowledge, is opening youtube and clicking on the first thing they see in milliseconds. Hell, just variation in page loading time probably has a bigger effect on what we see first. Critically though, there's no deadline - even if you see something you want to watch quickly, you don't have to click on something if you don't see something you want to watch. Without time pressure, there's no need to make an impulsive click.
It's happened multiple times before that a YouTube video keeps following me and I ignore it, but once I realize who it's by I see it.
Have you A/B tested mouth open and mouth closed?
I also think the graphics, title, face; these are signaling some level of effort and focus. It might not be the individual face, graphics, or title, it could be just their presence.
But when I'm logged in, it shows me the exact videos I've been avoiding watching these past few weeks and when I do watch a video, instead of showing me similar vids or vids from the same creator - it just shows me videos I've watched or the video updates I've been avoiding. And the odd Taylor Swift MV, an artist whose works (is it even music) I've never even...not even in a mix.
The team at YT has jokes it seems. Comedians.
(and if we're honest if you really do want to see the content then depriving yourself because of the contents of the thumbnail feels very self-defeating)
You and I might use subscriptions on YouTube (just like I prefer RSS), but 99% of viewers for some reason just go to the home page and click on things YouTube recommends (regardless of whether they subscribe to a channel).
If you don't get recommended, you don't get views, and it's even less likely that regular viewers (outside the few who actually check their subscriptions page) will engage with your videos.
For example, Luke Smith hosts many of his videos over on Odysee nowadays: https://odysee.com/$/invite/@Luke:7
Also, Bryan Lunduke also moved over to Locals and has generally expressed that it's a more pleasant community: https://lunduke.locals.com/
Of course, i don't doubt that it's akin to financial suicide for anyone who relies on YouTube as their main source of income, but if nothing else, it's nice to see people standing up for their principles, instead of selling out and trying to build their platform on another site that can end their presence at will.
I guess only time will show whether there ever will be any financially feasible alternatives to YouTube, though.
Question remains: so what? Unless you are monetizing your videos and intend to make significant money from “engagement”, why would someone single-minded let optimize for views or algorithm-friendliness?
For this guy, I guess he’s trying to make a living from YouTube, so I guess… by all means growth hack your video thumbnail. But for the rest of the video uploaders, absent a desire to monetize, a video with 100 views is no worse for the uploader than a video with 100,000 views.
My guess is that everyone that uploads videos with catchy titles and thumbnails wants to monetize their videos eventually. Even if money isn't a motivation, getting more views probably has a value in itself for most content creators.
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You can easily A/B test yourself into mediocrity by constantly optimizing for a larger, dumber audience. They stop liking your old content (despite your dumb faces, etc) so you make new content they like more, keep that cycle up for a while.
And you end up making emotionally charged rage-porn political videos and have become the next Facebook/cable news/etc.
This is also why the second or third album for a band is usually the best; they get popular and start letting their audience design their music and become repetitive and mildly awful.
Yep, 50% of them are below 100 IQ, 50% are above 100 IQ.
Official definition of IQ: measure average IQ of a population, then label the point where 50% of population is below average as 100 IQ points.
By definition, half are below the median. The normal distribution's median is equal to the mean, so half are below mean.
That's not how it works.
The most important factor to get views on YouTube is the recommendation algorithm. It makes a huge difference. YouTube will not even push your videos to people who are subscribed to you if the recommendation algorithm doesn't favor them.
As the click-through rate is an important part of how the algorithm decides what to recommend, you need a catchy thumbnail and a somewhat clickbaity title or you will be reduced to oblivion by people who use one regardless of the actual quality of your content. The story is the same with the length of video.
Veritasium made a couple of very good videos on the issue if you are interested.
If you sound like a dying cat, your click through rate will be high, but your average watch length will be low.
I agree there's a problem with how the algorithm drives creators to this stuff, but it's also not that unsophisticated that clickbait = success
Then, earlier this year, one of my videos suddenly skyrocketed[1]. It was an old video, 10 years or so, and it only consisted of one 10 second scene of a movie that I found funny at that time, and that I shared with a couple friends. It had about 50 views until march.
Then, it suddenly exploded, and now that video has just short of 1 million views, with a peak of ~60k or so per day.
I have absolutely no idea what crazy algorithm suddenly started recommending a 10-year-old video that is nothing more than a 10s snippet from a hollywood movie to millions and millions of people around the world.
The most interesting part (for me) was the psychological effect this had on me. First, my phone started sending notifications like crazy (I turned them off pretty quickly). That changed into a daily morning-routine of "let's see how many people watched the video this night"... Then, when the new followers came (I gained a couple hundred during that time) I had a feeling of guilt because I think they somehow "expect" similar clips from me from now on, and I would be letting them down (of course, totally irrational, I could care less of what some random people expect from me). Then I started researching how much revenue I could have gained from that if that were a "real" video with original content and ads thrown in.....
It was a wild ride :-D
Jeff, could you do a test and report the results? ;) Maybe dealing with Raspberry Pis isn't as lucrative as you thought.
Other than that (I also get triggered by the thumbnail thing), your channel is one of the very best on YouTube.
Have you tested a difference between a regular expression (intrigued, skeptic, smiling...) and a goofy face? For science?
guessing not the regex you were implying though
Though it gets an insane amount of backlash on HN (case in point: this thread).
This kind of multi-modal behaviour can be very hard to capture with A/B test. You get a large influx of people that more than offsets the loss in the other audience pool. It's also anyone's guess on which group is better. From a pure business perspective, it's probably okay to lose me, as I use adblock and/or youtube-dl to watch the videos, which means I don't really drive revenue. That said, I've noticed some second order effects: as I'm more technical, I would recommend these type of content to others who will listen to my advice. I've noticed similar effects with others. If the more technical people are in the second group and are driven away, I wonder if this kind of stuff makes a difference with the long term health of a channel/content generator, which could be very difficult to quantify.
In any case thanks for your videos and insights.
I think it might be more honest of you to phrase it not as: I have to do this because otherwise I don't get 20% more views. That feels a little bit disingenuous to me. You don't have to do anything. You could probably get a lot more views by colluding with another YouTuber to create drama or apparent "fights", like so many seem to. Aka, go full Kardashian. But you don't. You choose very explicitly what you do. Which does include goofy face thumbnails, but does not include staging YouTube drama.
A more honest phrasing to me might be something like: "Goofy faces get more views, and without them, my YouTube channel has much less income. I'm trying to support myself with YouTube, and so I am doing goofy faces even though I hate it and think it's completely asinine." You get really close to something like this phrasing, & the underlying message can be gathered by your other comments, but you don't outright own it. If you are going to do something asinine for exposure, you might as well own it imo.
So, with that out of the way: This project is really cool and thanks for doing a write-up & video on it :)
Having a face in the thumbnail helps me to identify channels that already of interest me. That is the positive.
While there is an element of entertainment to the channel, I usually view your channel for information (e.g. interesting project ideas). I expect the thumbnail to show me what the video is about. If an exaggerated facial expression draws my attention away from that, or leads me to believe there is more entertainment than substance to the video (e.g. it is for shock value), then I will simply skip over it.
Throwing in a face for a 20-30% increase in views is almost certainly worth it. The question is: are the exaggerated attention grabbing thumbnails worth a bit more than that? Each time I skip a video, the channel's relevance goes down in my mind. Each time the relevance goes down, I am less likely to assess future thumbnails positively.[1] My thoughts are that the "bit more" may be of short term value for gaining viewers, but counterproductive in retaining long term viewers.
[1] Yes, it is an unfair assessment since it is based upon unwatched videos. On the other hand, viewers are confronted with a deluge of videos each time they visit YouTube.
Tits are better than just a face.
https://blog.codinghorror.com/how-not-to-advertise-on-the-in...
Where does it end?
I watch a ton of YouTube and exaggerated facial expressions in thumbnails are rare in the channels I watch. The channels don't seem to be suffering for it, many have subscriber counts in the millions. I even have a concrete head-to-head example. Every Saturday morning, two channels I watch (clough42 and blondihacks) both post videos. YouTube puts them at the top of recommended every Saturday without fail. clough42 uses his face in the thumbnails, blondihacks uses a picture of her project. Both get recommended. Both channels have grown dramatically over the last year. As far as I can tell, YouTube considers them equally good.
On the other hand, I might not be the target demographic for "I cobbled together a bunch of computer shit" videos (which is kind of LTT's and Jeff Geerling's shtick). So maybe it's the right optimization for that kind of channel. (But if you want revenue, then your sponsors probably want me watching the video and not 13 year old kids with no money. Just saying.)
I will conclude that I pretty much won't click videos like this. Seeing the inside of someone's mouth in a computing video basically says to me "look, the content isn't very good, but I know how to play the game". This is unfair (Jeff, your content is fine), but it's how I feel. It's like seeing the first Google result for "foo bar" being "Cheap Foo Bars Foo Bar Food Bar Foo Bar Compatible With Quuxgorch". I'm not going to click it. You may have won the algorithm, but you didn't win me.
So I bet it does result in higher views, just children viewing it.
Doesn't mean you should do it though, maybe try having some dignity.
It works, optimizing for it makes you a part of the march towards idocracy, but hey, profits!
I don’t click on crap videos and content like that on principle. Interesting or not.
Youtube is gamified. Jeff doesn't play the game, he doesn't get the views. If he doesn't get the views, he doesn't get the sponsorships. If he doesn't get the sponsorships, he goes back to being a just another devops engineer who doesn't make the thing no one else will ever make.
I get it, the face is the worst. But until youtube fixes its algorithm (i dunno, to de-prioritize videos with 'the face') the Jeff's have to do the face to get the views to get the algorithmic advantage to get the views to get the sponsors to make the making worth the making.
There are very few left on YT who continue to make unedited video in the maker space[1][2] and obviously get punished by YT algorithms for that.
Cringe is part and parcel of YT, If we don't like it we should be watching videos on PeerTube, LBRY etc.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/c/MrTeslonian/videos
[2] https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCv1xxFkEiAdCVy6foEEUIvw/vid...
Another good one is "DF YouTube (Distraction Free)": https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/df-youtube/
My son and a friend of his were watching some pair of Minecraft streamers, and I couldn’t get follow what was happening. Both men were constantly yelling “WHAT? WHAT? OH MY GOD! AHHHHHHHHH!” As far as I could tell, they were both yelling independent things, and just walking around sheep.
As to why that works, my theory is that we're wired to respond to more extreme emotional displays because we're socially oriented great apes and that kind of information is important for navigating the world.
It's very stupid, but not surprising that those videos get more engagement.
I've literally never watched a single one.
1- I've not watched it
2- Unsubscribed his channel
3- Irrelevant
4- I don't bite any "Geerling" content