Research

Ideas

YouTube Algorithm VS Animators: Will YouTube ever support animators?

YouTube used to be a platform where small independent creators could make a living off their videos, and they didn't need a big channel to do so. Anyone could make money off their videos by the audience watching adverts played before the videos. However, the rules became stricter. YouTube introduced a minimum threshold on ad revenue. So a channel had to have a certain amount of subscribers and views in order to monetise.

Why aren't there more women in filmmaking?

The film industry is a male dominated industry.
A report done in 2019 by Celluloid Ceiling says that 21% of the directors, writers, executive producers, editors and cinematographers working on that year's top-grossing 250 films in the USA were women.

The Oscars, which is a 90-year-old event, has only ever had one female director awarded with an Oscar. In 2009 Kathryn Bigelow won an Oscar for the film The Hurt Locker.

YouTube Algorithm VS Animators: Will YouTube ever support animators?

How the YouTube algorithm worked in 2014

According to RubberNinja, who has been an animation artist on YouTube since 2006 here are his views on how the YouTube Algorithm worked in 2014. He released a video called Does Independent Animation Have a Future on YouTube? in 2014 where he talks about how YouTube is not supporting content creators who cannot upload frequently.

Watch time is greatest for 7 day active YouTube users.
Watch time increases as a user's subscription count increases. The more subscriptions a user has, the more often they come back to YouTube and the longer they tend to watch.
YouTube's goal is to increase the amount of content that is seen by making the platform a daily viewing destination.
Watch more and watch longer.
Most people think that the value of a video can be measured by how many times that video has been seen. However, we now reward videos that have more watch time. This is a better reflection of the value of the content rather than how many times it was seen. All major search and discovery algorithms are optimised for watch time throughout the site. Not all views are the same.
Value is not dependent on the individual video. It also depends on the viewing session from that video.
YouTube rewards a 6 minute video with 55% retention (3.3 minutes total for that video) with 20min/viewer total OVER a 3 minute video with 100% retention (3 minute total) where the viewers had an overall average watch time of 10 minutes rather than 20. Basically, depends on the viewer's behavior surrounding your video. (Explains why watch time can be helpful for YouTube- more watch time across the site means more ad impressions)
So directing people to watch more videos is really helpful. -Increasing video's length just to get more watch time does not work, because it affects audience retention and doesn't increase watch time. Also, don't decrease watch time to increase audience retention.
Focus on watch time, not views.
Suggested videos are ranked by watch time. https://gyazo.com/a2c277486f054f92b7e1...
Search results are also ranked by watch time.

20 Facts About YouTube's Algorithm

YouTube's algorithm is actually two algorithm - the home page algorithm and suggested videos algorithm.
The two algorithms are referred to as the recommendation system.
Most video traffic is generated by YouTube's recommendation system, not search results.
The recommendation system pulls videos in for individual users, rather than pushing content out for all users.
Videos are pulled in according to what an individual user is most likely to watch.
The ranking priorities of YouTube's algorithms have changed over time.
In 2011, clicks and views were a top ranking signal.
In 2012, total watch time was a top ranking.
From 2015 to today, viewer satisfaction is the top ranking signal.
YouTube uses surveys to measure viewer satisfaction.
Clicks of the 'not interested' button are a viewer satisfaction signal.
Likes and dislikes are a viewer satisfaction signal.
Average view duration is a viewer satisfaction signal.
Average percentage viewed is a viewer satisfaction signal.
Ranking on YouTube's home page is based on a combination of performance and personalisation.
Performance is measured by how users engage with a video in the context it's shown.
Personalisation is based on a user's previous activity.
Videos shown in YouTube's suggested section are both personalised and related to the current video.
YouTube's suggested videos algorithm aims to understand which videos are often watched together.
External factors can impact YouTube's video recommendations, which include topic interest, seasonality, and competition.

20 Confirmed Facts About YouTube’s Algorithm

This is an old article from 2015 which talks about how YouTube begins to put pressure on creators to increase their watch time and upload frequency.

This article also includes an animation video which was posted back in 2007 "Salad Finders 1: Spoons". This video has forty-two million views.

Save Animation: How ‘Watch Time’ Is Endangering YouTube Animators

Research Tracker

Completed: Friday 24th February 2023

Mindmap

Friday 13th January 2023

5 Key Milestones

Friday 6th January 2023

Questionnaire

Friday 6th January 2023

YouTube Algorithm VS Animators: Will YouTube ever support animators?

I created a questionnaire to complete my own primary research for my thesis topic. This survey was initially designed to inform me how many people watch YouTube and for how long. I know from my life experience not everyone watches a lot of YouTube, however, I grew up watching and sharing YouTube videos with friends. All of my friends outside of college spend several hours of the day watching content on this platform. Several of these friends were witnesses when the YouTube algorithm changed in 2012 and as we've grown we've seen the backlash.

I was not surprised to see that gaming channels were the highest-watched genre on YouTube. Game walkthroughs and the like were my primary source of entertainment as a young adult. I was shocked however to see that pranking channels were so low. This genre was very popular for the longest time and going from my research, those content creators were earning nearly as much as the peak gaming channels.

Do you know of any animators based on YouTube? The results of this question display that over half of the survey responders do not watch any animations on YouTube. I am not sure if this is due to personal preference or if the YouTube algorithm is not advertising short animations to viewers. This is something I need to look into.

Thesis Statement

YouTube used to be a place where low-budget and independent content thrived. Most of this was experimental and artistic. However, this is no longer the case. In 2012 YouTube changed its algorithm and it caused most animation channels to sink and disappear over the years. Most channels that were solely animation based have resorted to other means to support themselves as a way to thrive in the new YouTube algorithm.