What are they thinking?

I want to delve some more into those YouTube Partner Program changes, because I started writing something very late at night and therefore didn't have the luxury of a lot of time to spend exploring theories and structuring my thoughts.

Changes

Since its last leadership change in 2023, YouTube has changed somewhat in how it views the world. It used to be intensely reactive. Twitch is getting popular? We need live streaming to be our thing now! TikTok rises out of nowhere? Hey everyone, now we're a short-form video platform! Long-form user generated content? Eh... that's so 2010.

Under current CEO Neal Mohan, it has become much more confident in the idea that its fundamental core ground is long-form video, and while shorts and live streaming still play an important role in the home media experience, it makes most sense for them to build their entertainment hub around what they've traditionally done best. Shorts are still important, but they're framed as a way for users to discover long form content to enjoy on their TV rather than sit endlessly scrolling through them.

One of the interesting changes is that YouTube is diversifying its income streams away from pure advertising revenue. It sees a future in which it does to the multiple streaming services of the modern household what Netflix did to the premium satellite and cable subscription: create a service which might not have the top tier headline shows, but has so much that you can quite happily fulfill all of your entertainment needs from that one subscription alone.

This is a stated goal. Even mid-sized creators are running full production companies producing episodes of broadcast-quality television. This is where Mohan sees the growth for the next few years.

However, they're about more than wanting to be Netflix without the production costs. The reference they cite is not Breaking Bad, but Taylor Swift and her relationship with her fanbase. YouTube see a world in which fans not only watch their favourite creator, but buy merchandise, send them support and pay for exclusive access. All running through YouTube's own platform, giving them a cut of the revenue.

There's a change YouTube made back in 2023 that's so untalked-about that I completely missed the existence of it until I started researching around the recent changes. They split up Partner Program into two tiers: the existing tier everybody focuses on, where you start getting a cut of ad/Premium revenue, and a new lower tier.

The lower tier kicked in at 500 subscribers, 3,000 watch hours over the last 365 days, and (a new requirement not used in the other tier) 3 video uploads in the past 90 days. With this you were able to introduce memberships, Shopping, and the varying flavours of Super Thanks/Chat/Stickers where viewers pay money to have their interactions highlighted. This is explicitly called out as not changing under the new rules.

Memberships, Shopping and Supers now appear to be the intended first step into monetisation. Which makes some sense given other changes since that new tier was introduced.

Guidance

Since Johanna Voolich took on the CPO role in 2023, YouTube has been slowly updating the creator back end to provide a more guided experience for creators. Things which top-tier channels used to do manually such as A/B testing have become built-in tools, and there's a lot more "do this", "look at this", "focus on this" going on while you're navigating YouTube Studio. Not all of it successful - the AI suggestions for what to make videos on have become a bit of a running joke - but it's clear they're trying to encourage creators in a particular direction, especially novice ones.

YouTube repeatedly reinforces that direction as you work your way through Creator Studio. If you click all the tooltips and follow all the blog links it's clear what they want you to do in terms of building up a small channel: establish a loyal core audience who keep coming back, start attracting more casual returning viewers while converting some of those into core audience, then work on giving new viewers a satisfying experience and converting some of them into casual returnees.

Over the last couple of years they've tweaked their algorithm to work along this mode of thought. A video has to do well with your core viewers to be shown to the casual returning viewers; then it has to do well with the casual viewers to be risked with a completely new audience. It's not 100% strict and they will try random viewer cohorts every so often if something doesn't land with the core or it's reaching the end of a long tail with the current audience type, but generally YouTube are trying to shepherd you along the core🠖casual🠖new mode of thinking.

YouTube are also quite keen on getting creators to use the features they think you should be using. Typically this comes in the shape of big boosts for using a new feature that's not really taking off with creators. Being an early adopter of hypes, memberships, super chats or collaborations saw disproportionate boosts for the channels which did so, and of course the Spiffing Brit made it meme territory how far a video could be boosted by using Community posts. YouTube are keen on nudges when they want you thinking in a certain way.

Jimmynudgery

This, I think, leads us to that 8,000 watch hours decision. Yes, YouTube are probably correct in saying that the rise in TV as the primary platform, backgrounding, the increase in average length of videos consumed and more people watching YouTube all contribute to making 4,000 hours of watch time per year easier to achieve than when it was introduced in 2018. Still not easy but... less ridiculously difficult.

But if it was just about YouTube being fed up with having too many people on their books to pay out footling amounts of money to, it doesn't make sense why they're not merely leaving the requirements for existing Partner Program creators to stay monetised where they are, they're actually making it easier to remain in that status by adding a new route to qualify via frequency of uploads.

I think this might be one of those nudge situations. They want small creators to stop slowly grinding away at some promise of future ad revenue bringing them a £60 bank transfer once every few months, and start thinking about what they can do now in terms of community and fanbase engagement. Which fits into that core🠖casual🠖new model; the intended first monetisation step is to have a group of such dedicated core fans that a few of them will pay for memberships and merchandise.

Now, I will openly admit that YouTube are susceptible to the trap so many metrics-driven product organisations fall into, which is attempting to artificially create demand for underperforming products rather than address the root causes of why they're underperforming. Memberships have seen a bit of a lukewarm reception, especially the tendency to fill non-members' feeds with "Members Only" videos and not really offer that much which feels truly exclusive. It may be that enabling memberships the moment you're eligible for them comes across as a small channel getting too big for its boots and does more harm than good.

Plus there are people like me who make enough from their day jobs that it feels somewhat predatory to ask people to pay for memberships, especially when that day job precludes making any significant amount of worthwhile exclusive content.

Still, the sign is that YouTube appears to want you focusing on core audience and consistency at the early stage, and maybe pushing that ad revenue milestone up into the stratosphere is a hefty nudge to stop smaller creators obsessing about appealing to a broad audience before they've sorted out getting a really dedicated following in their niche. Or, y'know, they desperately want more people to use Memberships even though the experience is still a bit cack.

This all comes with the heavy caveat that it's conjecture, although conjecture based on scrutiny of YouTube's own blog posts, announcements and other observed behaviour. In general I favour, "YouTube is doing something in its own interests which might not necessarily align with mine" as an explanation for this sort of decision, and I like to get an idea on what they might be trying to achieve as they tend to reward creators who do the things they're trying to encourage.

And, y'know, I like to share what I've learnt for free.