No, Tech YouTube is Not Dying

I have been following some discussions regarding challenges tech content creators are facing, mostly on YouTube. Here’s an example:

Traffic is down for most of us. There is no doubt a lot of this can be attributed to shifting behaviors post-lockdowns, supply constraints, etc.

But what’s interesting is that over this same period of?time my CPMs (cost per thousand impressions) have been going up — meaning that the value of each view / watch minute is increasing. This leads me to think the algorithm is getting more precise in its recommendations and being more selective about what content it recommends to a particular viewer.

After all YouTube, like most social platforms, is competing for viewer attention. YouTube would prefer viewers stick around watching a single video vs. racking up short duration views on many.?This is why they opted everyone in for mid-rolls last year.

And content on YouTube is getting more and more valuable to advertisers.

As of November 30 this year my CPMs are up 17% over 2020 despite a traffic dip of over 5 million views — and that’s inclusive of all of last year’s holiday season which is usually when advertisers spend the most. Excluding the 4th quarter in both years (October, November & December) the CPM increase is 13%.

But you shouldn’t compare to 2020.?Why? A once in a century pandemic is why. A bulk of the world was locked down and needed technology to do their jobs and go to school. Here in the USA the government was sending thousands of dollars to citizens to help them weather the storm.?PC sales had their best year in a decade.?And?nobody could find a webcam!

The global economy is now in the throes of normalizing itself back to its usual seasonal cadences. In fact my 2021 decline in views almost directly correlates with vaccine doses hitting a critical mass early in the year.

So let’s compare against 2019.

I will likely have 25% fewer views vs. 2019 but my actual revenue (in dollars) is on track to be 5–10% more as my CPMs are running 30% higher in 2021 vs. 2019.

So the same content in 2021 is more valuable vs. 2019. And this value is not set by YouTube directly — this is what the advertisers believe the value of that content to be.

The takeaway? YouTube has been telling us for years now that a focus on watch time is far more important than just views. And this long-term strategy of continually honing content recommendations based on watch time and view duration has made individual pieces of content far more valuable.

My advice:

1. Eliminate views as as your measure of success (something you should have done years ago).
2. Dive into your revenue tab and look at what content and topics are driving the most revenue. You will likely find that your top earning videos are not the most viewed. There are some product categories that I find really, really boring but those topics drive the most revenue. This is part of the why it’s a job vs. hobby for me :).
3. Look at your engagement tab for those top earning videos — YouTube is giving us much more useful data now on view duration and moments in videos that generate the most engagement. Figure out what’s working, rinse, and repeat.

Yes there are things to complain about on YouTube, like?their boneheaded decision on the dislike button. But at the end of the day YouTube is its own free market economy and if you’re able to give that market what it needs you will be successful.

Good luck!