Has YouTube over-optimized its algorithm?
· Audio · General / technique · 4:27
In this week’s episode we have an earnest discussion about YouTube’s evolving algorithm and how it affects both creators and audiences, especially those of us here in the video, lighting, and sound space. Have they over-optimized for ad revenue for themselves and their stock-holders? Or does everyone benefit from what the algorithm seems to be doing?
Some of my other studio gear:
Gear used or mentioned
The links below are Amazon, B&H Photo, Sweetwater, or other affiliate links. As an affiliate, I earn from qualifying purchases.
- Earthworks ETHOS microphone — B&H, Sweetwater, Amazon
- Sound Devices MixPre audio recorder — B&H, Sweetwater, Amazon
- Sennheiser MKH50 microphone — B&H, Sweetwater, Amazon
- Impact Turtle-Base C-Stands — B&H, Amazon
- Aputure LS 600x Pro Bicolor LED Light — Aputure, B&H, Amazon
- Aputure Light Dome III Softbox — Aputure, B&H
- Amaran 300c RGBWW Single-Point LED Light
- Amaran Spotlight SE — Aputure, B&H, Amazon
- Rosco Prismatic Glass Gobo in Cool Lavender — B&H
- Canon C70 Cinema Camera — B&H
- Canon RF 24-70 f/2.8 lens — B&H, Amazon
- Panasonic GH5 camera — B&H, Amazon
- Panasonic 12-35mm f/2.8 II lens — B&H, Amazon
Read the transcript
Over the last few years, especially since 2022, this channel has seen a notable drop in viewership — not necessarily a crisis, but worth unpacking given all the algorithm discourse lately. Simply “make good content” oversimplifies it. Several viewers have mentioned they stopped seeing our videos in their feed, suggesting YouTube is showing our content less often even to people who’ve watched us before.
An important caveat: our content has a natural ceiling — not every subscriber needs or wants every gear review, since most people aren’t in the market for a new microphone or recorder at any given moment. For a long time we put a quick summary at the start of gear-review videos specifically so people could decide in seconds whether the product was relevant to them right now, and click away respectfully if not, saving them time. We got a lot of compliments on this approach.
But YouTube’s business model runs on selling and showing ads, and as a public company they need to keep growing revenue. Since their overall viewer base is likely close to saturated, growth increasingly comes from squeezing in more ad opportunities and keeping people on the platform longer — they’ve added pre-roll, mid-roll, and end-roll ad slots over the past several years and are largely out of new places to put more. To support that, the algorithm appears to heavily weight audience retention: what proportion of viewers who click a video stay to watch most of it, keeping them on the platform.
Our summary-first format works directly against that: when someone gets what they need from the summary and clicks away 15 seconds in, YouTube’s algorithm reads that as “this video wasn’t engaging,” even though the video did exactly its job for that viewer. Because it’s flagged as low engagement, YouTube then shows it to fewer people — a clear case of an optimization metric working against genuine viewer usefulness.
We’re going to keep making reviews and tutorials as always, and we’re going to experiment with moving the summary to the end of the video instead of the start, to see if that helps. If you have other ideas for solving this without sacrificing our video’s reach, let us know in the comments. Get out there and make some great videos and some great sound. Talk to you again soon.