Hello, do you know what happens if you put 12 ad breaks into one YouTube video?
And how do you even put a mid-roll ad break into a YouTube video?
I'm going to show you what happens when I ram ONE YouTube video with loads of ad breaks!
It's a two part video. This is part one: I'll put
what happens next as a link in the description... Hello I'm Neil Mossey and I'm a development
producer helping high achieving creators and performers just like you to get ideas
out of your head and onto here on YouTube. Have you seen what's on YouTube lately?
We need your ideas... we need them now! So let's dive now into my YouTube studio
dashboard where we can see which video is going to get the ad break treatment.
Now I'm going to scroll down to this section here on my analytics: "your top videos" in this period.
This is the reason I'm doing this: my channel is really broken.
I want to niche my channel so that's partly why I'm doing this crazy experiment.
If you look at my top five videos: one, two, three, four, five, there look at this
one - my Vaillant boiler remote control manual. This video has me reading out the instruction
manual from beginning to end for 40 minutes. This was in April and it was from the
time when I was trying to do lots of experiments to get 1000 subscribers.
Well I did that, and now I have a channel that's just full of stuff like this.
Now I've got a problem, because when someone sees this video they're not going to want
to watch all my videos about how to get ideas out of your head and onto YouTube.
They've got their information about the central heating.
They're not coming back and that I think damages my channel in the YouTube algorithm.
But the problem I've got is look! It's making me money!
It's maybe twenty dollars so far. Now I'm trying to take a long-term view on this.
One option is to just delete the video but I don't want to do that because it's
earning money and it's bringing in views. But the views are the wrong kind of views.
The video lasts 40 minutes so what if I put a lot of ad breaks in it?
What would happen? Would it reduce the overall watch time?
Or even the number of views, or would it make the revenue go up ?
So that's basically the experiment because I need money... but also because I need to
start to move these videos off my channel so I might as well play around with them first.
So I don't recommend you do this. I think I can be the fall guy for
this particular experiment. Now the way to add an ad break,
firstly obviously you need to be monetized... but I think you already know that.
You need 1000 subscribers and 4000 watch hours in the last year.
You can see that I have monetization on and I have ticked everything I could tick
down here on the monetization tab. Because the video is longer than 8 minutes
there's a section here called "manage mid rolls". I've got a few mid rolls!
But thankfully this shot cuts them out and leaves them out of shot, but with THESE mid rolls look I
already have five ad breaks in here. The first one's at 11 minutes 57
and you can see on the top left hand corner these are the other times of the videos.
I think these are the times that YouTube placed automatically and I like this really sneaky one
at the end - like 38 minutes 54 seconds, which is about 10 seconds before the end.
But we don't want five ad breaks in this video. I'm gonna double it and add two more!
Make it 12 ad breaks so firstly let's remove the ad breaks which are here.
It's really easy to remove an ad break. All you have to do is hit this trash can
sign - we call them rubbish bins here - and I'll just delete delete delete.
I wanted to place the first ad break at five minutes,
and the way I do that is if I run this cursor up to five minutes let's see what's happening
around here to place our first ad break... [AUDIO] "...outside a set time period."
Let's just put it there. I don't care!
I'm going crazy with the ad breaks today!
It's very easy you just hit "add add break" and there you go.
There's a nice blue line to indicate my first ad break.
If you want to save at any point you just hit continue here and that's it!
It's placed the ad break but we're not going to stop there.
Let me take you into my analytics and you'll see why I've chosen three minutes.
My average view duration - which isn't easy to say - is three minutes and two
seconds so I thought why don't I just make the ad breaks every three minutes?
Let's go with the mid rolls. I've got the first one at five minutes.
Let's put the next one at eight minutes, [AUDIO] "...and I guess we'll find out
what that is" Cliffhanger!
I like it! Add ad break!
The next one I'm gonna do at 12 minutes... Hey it could have a little counter in the
corner adding up the ad breaks. [AUDIO] "...Regarding the active
time period." Add a break.
If you're watching the actual video I'm putting these ad breaks on, I'm so sorry but
you know my daughter needs shoes. Let's put the next one at 15.
[AUDIO] "...setback mode" That's a good one, ad break!
22. [AUDIO] "...00 hours"
Ad break! The next one will be at 21 minutes. [AUDIO] "...back temperature"
Ad break. 24 minutes.
[AUDIO] "...And can no longer operate the controller."
Oh that's an ad break! 27 minutes in.
You better believe that's a mid-roll ad break. 30 minutes.
[AUDIO] "...without taking time periods into consideration"
Ad break. 33 minutes.
Ad break. [AUDIO] "...The following
service messages may appear." 36 minutes, all together now?
Ad break! And finally
39 minutes into this 39 minute video.... [AUDIO] "...Eco fit pure Vaillant remote control.
Ad break.
Now I make that 12 ad breaks but before I hit save I'm going to try one more experiment.
I'm going to try and get one more ad break in and I've always wanted to do this.
If you go right to the very very very beginning - back to 0:00 - will YouTube
allow me to add a mid-roll ad break at 0:00 seconds into my YouTube video?
I've got 0:00 in the timecode so you can type it straight in there and we'll go up to add ad break,
see what happens... Yeah!
It's done it! Now I don't know if that's going to work because
technically this is my first mid-roll ad at zero seconds so I'm kind of adding an extra commercial.
I'll see the ads before my video starts, who knows what effect
that's going to have on my watch time for this. I don't care because I don't want this video doing
more damage by bringing me more viewers. It's a bit like the plot of the movie
"The Producers" isn't it? AUDIO: I WANT THAT MONEY!
Awww, I fell on my keys! I'm almost trying to make a profit
by making people NOT come to see my show. Mel Brooks you're a genius!
So I'm going to hit "continue" here and it seems to have accepted it!
I now have a YouTube video with 13 mid-roll ad breaks!
If I hit the "manage mid-rolls" button there they are - 13.
Will it be money or reduced watch time? What do you think?
Leave me a comment below - make your prediction now before I release part two of this video
so you can see the actual impact that this has on my video and my channel!
Our 13 YouTube mid-roll ad breaks are now locked in and they can now do their magic
and spread their news of Wix and Honey and Grammarly but let's take a look now
at some of my other long videos that I think are damaging my ability to niche
my channel... to have my channel be more about getting ideas out of your head onto YouTube.
So I'm going to go now to "how to make a bus blind display case"
Now I love this video because it's 14 minutes long but it does not connect with any of my
other videos on the channel - except maybe my bus videos which again I've got a move.
So let's get to the mid rolls. Now at the moment I've been very
restrained because I have one ad break at 12:26 in a 14 minute video so let's see
what happens if we add the ad breaks and we'll add an ad break right the start, about 0:00.
That's our first ad break. I'll put these every three minutes as well.
I'm just going to put them straight in without really checking if they interrupt anything,
so add break at three minutes... let's go to six minutes...
I could just type it in here couldn't I. Nine minutes add add break.
12 minutes add add break. And we can move this
final one - you can actually drag them along the timeline as well so if I highlight it you
can see it turns blue and I can just drag that ad break over to say 13 minutes, just before it ends,
so we now have six ad breaks instead of one. Link in the description takes you to the
update video where we'll find out what the effect on my revenue is for this video.
For context, my bus blind video earned me 44 cents this month.
We'll see if that figure goes up. What I'm going to do now is to find my top-viewed
videos in the last 28 days, and see if there's a long one here that I can ram with ad breaks.
Oh this is a good one. This is "how to buy postage" in the UK.
It's an absolutely gripping video about how to buy stamps online.
This video has already earned me $27 from YouTube, let's see if I can get more money
or if the views will go down. And this is one of my best
performing videos at the moment. There's only one ad and I think that was placed
automatically by YouTube, so how do we do this? Let's put one at 0:00 and I'll put one at
three minutes... 5:45... Add ad break.
And we've got one at the end. Let's put one in just before the video finishes.
The video finishes at 9:42. Let's put one in at 9:41.
So we now have five ad breaks instead of one. Don't forget to hit save!
And just as a control experiment, I have three videos about me traveling on South Western Railway
and I'm going to add an ad break at zero seconds on each of these to see what effect
that has on the views, or the revenue. That video earns me 31 cents per month.
That's the figure we're looking to beat. Now I need to put a warning on this experiment
which is: I don't care what effect it has on my revenue or my watch time for those videos
because I think they are being quite harmful to my channel anyway through their success.
But I have no guarantee that YouTube will actually serve 13 ad breaks in
that first video or any of the others. Even though I have put a mid-roll ad
break at zero seconds I don't know if YouTube are even going to play along with that and actually
supply a video at zero seconds. Who knows?
I'll be watching the videos myself to see if it looks like an extra ad has been played.
I think the only way that I'm going to tell whether or not this works is to check the update
video that I'm going to make in one month's time. That video is right here: I suggest we'll go there
now to see how much money I earned or to see how much my watch time or video views have plummeted!
I might have crashed the channel! Here's what YouTube thinks you
should be watching next, thanks for coming along with me on this dangerous experiment.
Now do you know what would be really funny right now is if I put in an ad br--