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YouTube Data Expert Explains What the Algorithm Wants · Gimbal Podcast

• 0:00
  Every time you're putting out a piece of content, you're training the algorithm on who your audience is. What are the resources you point people to for improving their retention knowledge? This might be a controversial opinion, but I think it's really easy for AI to fake authenticity. So what I'm seeing a lot of people win with at the moment is
• 0:17
  All right, Marcus, I am excited to have you on the show today because you are one of the most respected and most followed YouTube strategists on the platform. Do you get really granular with your clients about like who your specific audience is and not only the demographics, but the psychographics behind them? Do you have like an avatar for each of them? Are you thinking about it on that level?
• 0:36
  I don't actually. I know it's like not the correct answer to give. And I know some people are really good at this. For example, there's like Ed Lawrence in the space. So he's like very heavy into like generating an avatar and thinking about like the problems your audience are facing and creating content based on those problems and stuff. I know I'm personally just like really bad at that. Like if I try and like guess essentially, because that's what you're kind of doing. You're like,
• 0:59
  making informed guesses as to like who your audience are usually. Most of the time you don't actually know their exact, you know, people are guessing like, oh, my audience is single and they have three kids and you know, they eat this for breakfast and they do this. Like, yeah, are they really like all of your, um, but like, I'm just going to look at what's working right now in the space and I'm just going to try and make these videos as funny as possible while also being inspired by the data on what's actually working in the space right now.
• 1:28
  And then the avatar will take care of itself. That's a great point. Yeah, sometimes with my clients as they're getting started, you know, we have a guess at who is going to watch the audience, but the data will eventually tell you the truth. And being too focused on one single avatar, it feels narrow-sided. What are the core data trends that you're seeing right now in June 2026?
• 1:49
  From what we're seeing, interestingly, you would think YouTube shorts placements becoming more frequent on the homepage and on search would decrease the long-form views overall across the platform. But that's not what we're seeing. Long-form views seem to stay relatively stable. I think the reason for that is probably reduced decision fatigue. I think, for example, if you're on the homepage and let's say there used to be eight long-form videos that showed up before a row of shorts.
• 2:16
  I think the chances are the majority of those of the views might have gone to those top couple of videos. So the reduction of number of choices and YouTube just keeping those top preferences has probably increased views there to an extent, which sort of helps to counteract the lesser amount of placements of long form videos in these locations. But what it is doing to an extent is reducing a bit of diversity of long form views.
• 2:45
  Like if you're a creator who thrived in that eight to ninth spot and now you're not ending up in that spot anymore, even though across the board, YouTube long form views don't seem to have gone down across the platform, it's going to feel like views have gone down significantly on your channel.
• 3:00
  So tell me if this is right. What I'm hearing is long form views aren't actually going down. They're just being distributed to larger channels more or the same amount as before. I wouldn't necessarily say larger channels. I would say I think the bar has just gotten higher. Essentially. What is the action item you tell your clients or you recommend to teams based on everything you've just said? How do you apply that?
• 3:24
  So I guess it depends on your goal. So if your goal is just to get like a lot of views, like leaning into shorts is a pretty good decision right now. I think the thing with shorts as well is slowly we're seeing a shift again where more and more shorts are showing up in search. And so I think that's really interesting. And to be honest, I haven't tested this as much as I would like. So, but my, the theory is typically short form content, the quality of that traffic is not as high as long form content.
• 3:50
  content traffic. And I still think that's true, but I think it's an interesting sort of new dynamic where more and more people are clicking on shorts from the search page. So it's like intent-based views on short form content, which is somewhat of a newer concept. Most of the time, short form content gets most of its views from just a feed. Do you advise your clients on other shorts platforms like TikTok and Instagram as well? Or are you strictly YouTube?
• 4:16
  I mainly focus on YouTube. I'm not that knowledgeable on other platforms. I think there is a fair amount of crossover in a sense that like, I think when people talk about, you know, whenever you say the word algorithm, replace it with audience and like you just want to hook viewers. I think that's fairly true. And so a lot of the principles can apply to other platforms. But usually the advice I would have to people is like, if you're creating content, like short form content, just post it on all the other platforms because you might as well. You've gone to all the effort of creating it. It doesn't make sense to just post it on one platform. Right. Right.
• 4:44
  I bring it up because it seems like TikTok and maybe Instagram is kind of a ground where you can just throw everything and the stuff that hits will hit and the stuff that doesn't hit will get swept under the rug. But I'm curious if that's also true with YouTube, because YouTube, as you mentioned, for long forms, has this ranking system for the audience. And I don't know the truth behind it, but I've seen through the clients that I work with that your past performance is somewhat indicative of your performance.
• 5:12
  future videos performance. Is there any truth to that in the shorts world as well? People talk about like there being like a trust score, essentially like YouTube, you know, liking certain creators and not liking certain creators. First of all, like I should say, we don't know, like Google have done some things, for example, where like,
• 5:30
  I can't remember the exact specific change, but I think there was like a similar situation with like the Google search algorithm where everyone was talking like for blogs and stuff where everyone was talking about, you know, there's some sort of like trust score and this and that. And Google were like, no, no, there isn't. And then it got leaked and basically it got proven that there was the case. So sometimes like Google, like play with like semantics and stuff. So like, no, there isn't a trust score, but there's like something that,
• 5:54
  kind of effectively does the same thing but like you know if i had to guess i don't think it's necessarily that there's an actual trust score that you can sort of manipulate that google like you know gives you a rating and then that rating affects how much traffic they're willing to send you and stuff like that but i think the platform may uh sometimes operate in a way that that it feels like there is a trust score and that's more just to do with um collaborative filtering as a
• 6:21
  Basically, when viewers watch your content and they like your content, then they're going to be more likely to be served more of your content. So it's like if I have a million people watch my video and really like my video, the chances are they're going to be served my future. My next video is on the higher side. But if you aren't getting any views right now, then you're not going to have a million people who really liked your video, who YouTube is going to be potentially likely to serve your next video to.
• 6:46
  I personally, if I had to put a bet on it, I would say there isn't some sort of like numerical trust score in YouTube's back end yet. But I think YouTube can sometimes act in a way as if there is some sort of trust score, but that's just based on collaborative filtering and how YouTube is more likely to show content to people that it thinks they've watched and enjoyed similar content in the past.
• 7:09
  If I have a short that I have prepared for, say, Instagram as my primary target and it's sitting there as an asset and I'm thinking, oh, I could upload this to YouTube and it could be a short and it would increase my video count by one. But it's not really made for YouTube and it's not I don't know, it's not the best piece of work I've ever made.
• 7:29
  Should I upload it to YouTube or should I just keep it on the one platform? I would upload it to YouTube personally. Okay. So there's no fear of past performance impacting future performance. I guess, I guess it would depend. It's like, it depends on how bad the piece of content is. Like if it's a really bad piece of content, then I'd say like, no, no.
• 7:48
  Well, let me give you some context. For example, we have I have a couple of clients that have a very specific audience on, say, Instagram. You know, maybe it's more female driven educational content. And then on the YouTube side of things, same creator, but different audience. Now, the topics that they're interested in are different from the topics that the Instagram audience is interested in. And maybe I've got a decent video that performed pretty well on Instagram. So now I'm tempted to put it on YouTube. And you're saying, go for it.
• 8:14
  In that case, we're not talking about a quality mismatch. We're talking about a lack of topic and audience consistency. I do think it's really important to sort of target a consistent audience. Think about it like every time you're putting out a piece of content, you're training the algorithm on like who your audience is. And I don't want to train the algorithm in the wrong direction.
• 8:35
  I want to pivot the conversation to outlier theory. You have a tool called Velio, which helps people find excellent video ideas. This has kind of become the mainstream on YouTube right now. Everybody's kind of applying outlier theory. Can you tell me what outlier theory applied poorly looks like and then outlier theory applied correctly looks like?
• 8:57
  Outlier score, for those who don't know, outlier is like basically you find the baseline of views for a certain channel. So let's say a channel typically gets 10,000 views per video and you find that based on their previous videos. And then if that channel goes and posts a video that gets 100,000 views, 100,000 is 10x, 10,000. So that's a 10x outlier. Outlier score for me is just like one important component I look at. Two of the other really big important components I look at are supply and demand. And I kind of grouped those together. Supply and demand. And then the other thing is timing.
• 9:27
  Outlier score applied really poorly would be you modeling a video that was an outlier, but now there's 500 other people making that same video. So supply is really high. There's now much less people interested in that topic. So demand is low.
• 9:46
  Uh, and also the ally you're modeling went viral like a year ago. So the timing is not very aligned. And let's say if we're going to even exaggerate even further, like, let's say the video that went, it went viral like a year ago and it was about a topic that was trending at that time. So there was like, the timing was good, but now you're like a year late to this piece of news. It'd be like me right now making a video on like the Johnny Depp Amber Heard trial. It's like, you know, it's, it's already happened, right? It's ages ago.
• 10:12
  Everybody's applying outlier theory. So-and-so is copying so-and-so, I'm copying you, you're copying somebody else, blah, blah, blah, blah, hypothetically, of course. What does life look like beyond outlier theory? Is there something that happens after all of the saturation becomes overwhelming?
• 10:26
  I think the next stage is going to be more so applying that extra nuance of like supply and demands, like competition and view volume and also timing. So what I'm seeing a lot of people win with at the moment is modeling outliers, but modeling them very quickly. Basically on Vailio, for example, we've got a feature where you track your whole niche in one place.
• 10:47
  And then we have an algorithm that's trained to like identify the baselines in your niche and like what basically figure out what good looks like for your niche specifically. And then when something drastically outperforms good, we send you an alert. And so what we're seeing like success with at the moment, right, is people tracking their niche, they get an alert. And then when they get an alert, they like take action on that immediately. Right.
• 11:08
  So they're very quick to, so timing is very close. And because they jump on it quickly, chances are most other people haven't jumped on it yet. It's a little bit more logistically annoying because it means that you have to be able to like pivot and create content pretty quickly. But I think in a world where, like you said, everyone is sort of,
• 11:26
  now familiar with outlier theory and everyone's just sort of doing it. If an outlier has been out in your space for too long, everyone's just going to copy it. It's funny because I've worked in the education space for a while with authors and thought leaders and stuff like that. And the joke that I always make was...
• 11:42
  you know, a year ago, two years ago, you could make a video called seven ways to be more productive, and it would get a million views. And now if you made that video, it would get crushed into oblivion, like you just would have no, no shot at getting any views, not only just because AI has already answered that question in five seconds rather than a 15 minute video.
• 12:00
  But it's just not something that people are interested in in the moment. The strategy that we're deploying with our teams is very similar to what you just said, which is being very observant of what's happening in the moment and looking for opportunities to capitalize on that. I think the lesson for us that we could apply is see what else is working at that same moment. We're kind of just taking what's happening in the world and then finding a way to apply it to each of our clients and being like, oh, this is, you know, Wimbledon's coming up next month. Do you have any content about tennis that we could talk about?
• 12:29
  And that's kind of hitting the timing thing. But then also looking for tennis related content, seeing how that performs seems to be the next step with that. Yeah. It's like anticipating trends that are coming out before they come up. I think that makes sense. And that plays on like the timing component, right? Is like you have that space to be able to anticipate. And I think like there is also going to be more room for people coming up with like purely original content. I'm glad you brought this up. Please explain. Yeah. Yeah. What about people or teams who are doing actually creative original stuff?
• 12:58
  Yeah. So this is going to be, this might be a controversial opinion, but I think most of those people lose. And I think the reason, okay. I think, I think the reason is just like, for me to get super deep into this, like I went down a rabbit hole once and learned a bunch about what's called chaos theory. And one of the like laws in chaos theory is something called entropy, which essentially means like the natural state of everything is always in decay. So an example of that would be, you know, if I was to go and make,
• 13:27
  a sandcastle at the beach. Chances are if I then come back in a week from now, that sandcastle is not going to be there. Why? Because there are an infinite number of combinations of those grains of sand that don't look like my sandcastle, then that do. Or if you leave your garden, for example, if you do a bunch of gardening, you make your garden like awesome and you leave it for a year and come back, chances are it's not going to look the way you left it. Why? Because there's an infinite number of combinations of your plants in your
• 13:54
  that don't look like how you left your garden. I think about ideation similarly, in a sense that there are basically an infinite number of ideas and ways of formatting a tile and thumbnail that won't work than do. And so it sounds great, like, oh, just create original, authentic, amazing content. I think it often suffers from survivorship bias because I think most of the people who do go and do that, a lot of them fall prey to
• 14:22
  the trap of entropy. Essentially, they go and create a bunch of original, unique ideas, but because they're sort of guessing and just creating like original, unique ideas, most of them don't hit or at least a much lower percentage of them don't hit than do hit. And that can be tough. You know, if you're, if you post, you know, you make 20 videos and only one of those videos actually gets views compared to the others. And I think that's probably the majority. I think, I think we have like a bit of a warped perception of like,
• 14:47
  how well originality works because we only see originality when it works, right? You don't see the hundreds of other channels who tried to be original and just like got dirty views on all their videos. And I think the ratio of those is much higher than, from what I see anyway, the ratio is much higher than people think. There are definitely people who can pull it off, people with like talented...
• 15:09
  individuals in the space like for example yourself you've got a pretty good um i call like creative intuition right if you've created and seen enough content over the years you start to develop like subconscious pattern recognition and create an intuition for what makes a good piece of content versus what makes a bad piece of content and that allows you to sometimes create better original content than say the average person like mr beast for example jimmy if he was like to
• 15:32
  create a channel in a completely new niche and not be able to look at that niche at all and not be able to do any research he would still probably be able to come up with like pretty cool original content that would get views just because he he's like fine-tuned and honed his creator intuition over the years uh through so much obsession but i think the majority of people uh they haven't trained their creative intuition enough or at least to the point that would give them license to be able to go out there and create truly original content that actually gets views
• 16:00
  That's why my usual recommendation to people is like focus on the research and focus on the data. And that's for me as well. Like I've been creating content for like 10 years, but I still miss all of the time when I try and guess at what's going to work. So that's why I like I usually recommend like the data driven approach first. And then once you've got that working, then you can experiment with more like a research.
• 16:20
  original quote unquote ideas. I love that. That's great. We have a new threat and that is the threat of AI. The meta from many people is that if you prioritize authenticity, if you prioritize honesty, that is what will win with audiences. And during your pre-interview, you said you don't agree with that and that viewers are going to be completely fine with AI created content. Please explain yourself.
• 16:49
  Well, I think authenticity and honesty and everything is useful. I'm not saying that people don't care about that. I just think it's like really easy to fake that. Like I think it's really easy for AI to fake authenticity and honesty. I think us humans, we think we're more like emotionally nuanced and mature and able to pick up fake authenticity or fake honesty much better than we actually are.
• 17:14
  Yeah, well, I do think it's a good thing. I'm not saying creators shouldn't do that. And I do think audiences appreciate it. I think saying like, oh, being authentic is, you know, the best hedge against AI. I don't know. I don't think it is practically. I got to tell you, I watched this AI clip yesterday and it was a scene from Friends and they were talking about ChatGPT. Chandler was on his phone, his smartphone. Obviously, this didn't exist because it was 2004. I think the show ended, but it was really entertaining.
• 17:42
  And I knew it wasn't real and I liked it and I actually wanted to see more of it. And so in a world where AI is exceptional and the people we look up to as thought leaders or as entertainers, you know, they're great. But then AI is also providing that like it's scratching that itch. What does that say about the creator economy when that time comes?
• 18:00
  No, I think that's 100% true. Like, I think people care a lot more about feeling like they're getting the value they want, which in your case in that video was like entertainment. And it was AI, but you're like, I don't really care. It was like, it was like entertaining and funny to watch. People then talk about like personal brands, though. They're like, okay, but a lot about like personal brands who are giving their thoughts on like real life events that have actually happened to them.
• 18:22
  And I think my initial reaction to that was like, yeah, that should be safer. And I think it still is on the safer side than the not safe side. But I don't think it's as safe as people think. And sort of the evidence for that seems to be like a couple of just videos I'm seeing that are working really well. So like there's this classic silver guy videos.
• 18:44
  I don't know if you've seen those. There's like a million videos of this guy now. And often they get hundreds of thousands of views. And he just talks about silver and the price of silver and what's working in the silver market and all this kind of thing. It's like 100% AI generated. Anyone with even a vague amount of experience with AI can usually figure out that the guy's AI.
• 19:03
  And yet the videos get views. And I feel like a year or so ago, if we were to say, you know, an AI generated avatar that very clearly to most people is reading an AI generated script by ChatGPT is giving you investing advice on silver. You'd be like, no one's going to listen to that. But people do listen to that. There are a lot of views. And you might say not everyone listens to it, but like there are people listening to it, even though it's like very obviously AI. What happens when it's not very obviously AI, right?
• 19:31
  Point two is, even if we think solely AI-generated characters are never going to be able to take over, what happens when creators start making AI clones of themselves? So for example, I think about Dan Martell a bunch because I've done a bit of work with him. Dan Martell, a very talented content creation team as well with Sam Gaudet and all those guys, he basically just shows up to videos, just reads a script that's already been written for him and then leaves. Everything else is taken care of for him.
• 20:00
  He's still only able to put out, you know, one to two videos a week because there's still a limiting factor of his time. He still has to show up and sit down and physically record the videos himself. And he's got a lot of other things going on. So, like, they can't get to the point where they're putting out a daily video while maintaining quality because Dan just doesn't have enough time to record that content.
• 20:20
  But what happens when you can create AI avatar clone Dan Martel, who you can just give those same scripts that you would have given to the actual Dan Martel to record. You just give them to AI clone Dan Martel. And the tech's at a point that people can't tell the difference between AI clone Dan and real Dan. Well, at that point, it's just like a scale up the team and put out like a video a day sort of situation. And I think at that sort of volume, you're going to win.
• 20:48
  I think those are sort of areas that people don't think about when it comes to AI as much. I think it's going to be extremely impactful on the platform because it's going to change. I feel like underpinning most successful channels out there is this balance, like a scale of quality and quantity.
• 21:06
  You want to put out a lot of videos, but if you put out too many videos, then the quality of those videos typically drops. The reason for that is that usually there's pretty heavy key man risk with like most YouTube education channels. And there's like one person who's like the face of the channel. And that one person only has 24 hours in a day.
• 21:24
  But when you remove that, then in theory, you can put out daily videos and multiple videos a day. You could have multiple channels. You could have Dan Martell could have 10 Dan Martell channels, you know, Dan Martell, Dan Martell 2, Dan Martell, you know, more Martell, like specific, like Dan Martell could be putting out 50 videos per day that look and sound like him. They're indistinguishable from him, but he's putting out 50 videos, 50 high quality long form videos per day if he's like scaled up the team well enough.
• 21:51
  I just don't see why, like, I don't see any reason why that wouldn't come to fruition at the moment.
• 21:58
  That changes my opinion a little bit because I was, you know, you look at AI as arguably a threat to the creator economy, at least in some impactful way. And for the people that I resonate with most, it's people who work behind the scenes for teams, for creators. And if AI is winning, then creators are losing and teams are dwindling. But after what you just said about Dan Martel as the example, I think that teams are actually OK. Like teams are actually going to be fine. It's just changing the way that they work.
• 22:25
  You know, they're not necessarily writing for some one person. They're writing for this like AI entity or they're editing for this AI entity. Like they might like teams may actually be better off working with AI characters versus real people because of the elimination of key man risk.
• 22:40
  I think there will be some threat for teams when, you know, chat GPT gets to the point that it can generate scripts as well as a, Oh man. Oh geez. That's where, that's where you, the teams start to struggle with it. But I do think there will, there will probably always be, I guess lucky for the creative directors here, since this is a creative director podcast, like there will always probably need to be like a person behind the scenes, like running the show to an extent, like at least directing the AI and reviewing scripts and stuff like that. So, uh,
• 23:09
  People with taste. This is what I like. I think people with taste are going to be are going to be safe. Like I feel kind of safe because I do the creative director stuff. I feel like I have a decent taste. But back when I was a video editor, I was a lot more scared. I would be a lot more scared now because there are tools coming out. They're like, Oh, you can use AI to edit your talking head video or something like that.
• 23:28
  Yeah, I think if you are an editor or something like that, listening to this, you want to learn the strategy side of retention. So not just like, how do I edit this cut so that it looks good? But like, how do I edit this video in a way that actually retains people? Because then you can always become like, you know, the creative director of the edit.
• 23:47
  and help because AI, I think it's not going to be too long. And I'm like, I'm seeing some like pretty crazy tools behind the scenes that companies are building out to help with like basically AI editing that a lot of them aren't live yet, but it's like AI editing videos, you know, start to finish to a decent quality is not as far away as people think.
• 24:08
  But in saying that, AI is still not, it doesn't have the retention knowledge or as much as like often retention strategies and stuff do. It can make the video look pretty, but it doesn't necessarily know how to edit the video in a way that's actually gonna like psychologically grab a viewer in.
• 24:25
  I think there will always be a space for like high level, like skilled editors as well, but you'll have to learn more than just, this is how I put together a video that looks good, but this is how I put together a video that actually retains people. And you can direct the AI and help the AI understand that. Cause I think it will take longer for the AI to understand that in my opinion, because at the moment, a lot of the, a lot of the advice AI gives regarding YouTube and like retention and stuff like that isn't up to scratch.
• 24:51
  What are the resources you point people to for improving their retention knowledge? I'd have to shout out my friend Mario Yost, who's an X-Mr Beast strategist. He's a super smart guy. He doesn't talk about this stuff as much, but I'm going to rep him right now because he's a legend. He's actually a card carrying member of Mensa, so he's actually a card carrying genius.
• 25:14
  Yeah, right. And also, I mean, most people who know him know that he worked for, like, Mr. Beast and Stokes Tunes and stuff like that, which I can confirm he definitely has worked with those guys and is as close with those guys as, I feel like, for example, it feels like every second strategist out there is saying, like, oh, I work for Mr. Beast. And it's like, you know, they worked on, like...
• 25:33
  two minutes of like one trial short that they once submitted to a job application for him. And now they say they work for Mr. Beast. Whereas Mario, I know for like, like I've jumped on calls with Mario and beast. And like, we've actually talked and hung out. It's like, I know for a fact that like Mario is legit there. And, um, he also works with us.
• 25:53
  A ton of other massive creators that he's actually not allowed to talk about publicly. But in my opinion, he's the number one retention strategist in the world. Mario Yos, that's J-O-O-S. I would definitely check him out for a retention. That is the strongest shout ever. I took his cohort and I think that was the starting point that made the transition for me from video editor to creative director to head of content. Oh, that's sick.
• 26:14
  Um, what I learned from him was just insane. I actually think that you might've been like a guest on like week 11 or week 10 or something of that, of that cohort or one of the cohorts. Yeah. So maybe that's how you landed on my radar as well. Freeze million view club. Um, yeah, that's it. That's it. I was a guest a few times there. Yeah. Okay. Last question. I asked this to all of my guests and you kind of have already answered, but I want a different response from you. Who is a creator that is on your radar right now? That's worthy of a shout out for doing something excellent.
• 26:42
  This is gonna sound really cliche and I don't like sounding cliche, but I think honestly, I think the stuff that Alex Hormozy is doing is pretty impressive in the business space. I think his Hormozy highlights channel strategy, I think is like, he's like the first person I think who's sort of done this successfully at scale. It's like having that main channel, that main branding channel, and then having a second channel that just pumps volume.
• 27:05
  It sounds like a simple strategy in theory, but there aren't many people who've really done it. And I know that it's working really, really well for him and his team. I know their highlights channel, their Helmosey highlights channel is generating more revenue for them than their actual main channel, even though it gets less views.
• 27:19
  Cool, Marcus. Thank you so much for joining the show, sharing your knowledge. Thank you for being here. Thanks, Devin. Appreciate you having me. That's it for this episode. Thank you so much for watching or listening. If you're new here, please consider subscribing or leaving us a review on the audio platforms. It really helps us out and reach more people. If you are a producer, a head of content, or a creative director for a channel that has over a million subscribers, please reach out. You have knowledge that I would love to ask you about. We would love to get you on the show. We'll see you next week with another episode. Thank you so much for joining.