- This video has over 5 million views
thanks in large part to an audience retention
of almost 250%, but it's not a YouTube short,
so it doesn't automatically loop back on itself.
(splat sound)
I will admit it, for the first time ever,
this video breaks the YouTube algorithm,
but can it help you do the same thing?
- Please turn your playback speed to 25%
and turn on closed captioning.
If you don't do this, none of this video
will make sense at all.
(sped-up audio plays)
- Hmm well, that's not very pleasant to listen to.
Let's do what he says and slow down the speed of this video.
- Most favors three metrics.
- Oh I see.
To explain this in its simplest terms,
audience retention is measured in the real world,
not in the YouTube world.
For example, if you watch a one minute YouTube video,
and it takes you one earth minute to watch it,
that's an audience retention of 100%.
But if you watch that same one minute YouTube video
at double speed, it only takes you 30 seconds,
and thus you receive an audience retention of 50%.
I know that sounds really weird and it gets even more weird
when you flip it and slow everything down.
So yes, if you watch a one minute YouTube video
at 0.25 speed in the YouTube player,
it will take you four earth minutes to watch,
and that's an audience retention of 400%.
We know this because I did that very test
on this channel over four years ago.
And I talked about it again
when PewDiePie asked his audience
to watch one of his videos at double speed.
If you were going to try and hack
the YouTube watch time analytics,
which of course we do not recommend,
you would have to do this.
(fingers snap)
(sped-up audio plays)
And now a creator has finally put that theory to the test
and he even gave us a mention in a video.
- Found testing on another channel and a video by VidIQ.
- Thanks for the mention, Dapz.
YouTube is built on the foundation
that watch time is good for your videos
like it says here. (ding sound effect)
So it does seem baffling
that there is an obvious exploit here.
Logic suggests that the playback speed
should not influence the watch time
and the audience retention of the video,
but is it too late for YouTube
to change the way this metric works, given that there are
billions of videos that have already operated
with this weird quirk of watch time?
Well, YouTube has been tinkering with other stuff recently,
like making auto-play views in the home feed count as views,
which will impact click-through rate.
Video on that coming soon.
And they've also made huge changes that nobody's asked for,
such as abbreviating sub counts
and getting rid of the dislike public counts.
But when it comes to this watch-time algorithm hack,
I think YouTube just don't care
because it has severe limitations.
- Most favors three metrics, click-through rate,
watch time, and retention rate.
- Let's be honest,
this is an excruciating viewer experience.
And if this was a presentation style
for every video on the channel,
viewers would quickly abandon the content.
In short, this exploit is not sustainable
for any creator beyond one or two videos.
And for 99% of creators, this will never work.
(ding sound effect)
So why was Dapz the exception?
Well it's because this is exactly the type of content
the audience expects, quick odd stories and skits
that challenge viewer expectations.
And yes, technically speaking, this is Dapz reading out
a subscriber's name a million times.
Now whether you or I look at this content and go, eh,
is absolutely irrelevant,
because YouTube has already found
hundreds of thousands of people
who do get the content that's been watched
over a hundred million times.
The title and thumbnail
create instant curiosity and intrigue.
It's almost pitched to the viewer as a challenge,
does this video really break the algorithm?
And ironically, the more views it gets,
the more compelling the video becomes.
But most importantly, beyond the idea matching the creator
and a really good thumbnail and title pitch,
the creator kept it simple.
This video breaks the YouTube algorithm.
Yeah how does it do that, and what does 400% mean?
Let's click in.
All right now, now I'm asked
to play the video at 0.25 speed, or it won't make any sense.
Hmm this sounds weird, but I can still understand
what he's saying at a quarter speed.
Ah he's explaining it to me now.
This is interesting, nice little experiment.
Thanks for telling me all of us in just 30 seconds.
It is not the exploit itself
that caused this video to be successful.
It's the execution of the idea behind the exploit.
I think all of us as creators are often guilty of this,
taking a very simple clean idea through the creative process
and adding layer upon layer of complexity onto it.
Always remember that when a viewer watches your video,
they are encountering your idea for the first time.
It has to make sense to them
(fingers snap) in an instant.
Oh, and I do have a little confession to make.
One of the reasons I'm making this case study is because
thanks to this vidIQ tool, I can see that the video
has started getting tons of views per hour.
So I'm trying to create similar content
to poke YouTube's recommendation system.
Some may call this jumping on the bandwagon.
I like to think of it as a really sensible idea.
Speaking of really good ideas,
if you wanna find out how a channel rick-rolled their way
to 100,000 subscribers in 100 days,
I highly recommend you watch this video over here,
but be prepared to be really annoyed.