The State of YouTube: Mr Beast's secrets and dying age of content creators
This Week: A report on recent changes and trends occurring on Youtube + a review of Mr Beast's allegedly production secrets.
Writing this post, I spent more time arguing where to use the word content and where not to. I’m a marketer confused by his own standards. let’s begin.
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YouTube is the winner on its worst behaviour
The platform leads everyone in terms of CTV viewership, platforms like Netflix and Disney are also fighting YouTube for attention, not just each other. For Gen Alpha in UK and US, Youtube is the coolest brand with Netflix ranking at the second place.
The success of Youtube is there but they aren’t that far from the competitors in the streaming wars. The platform primarily benefits a lot from Google’s advertising tech, leading to more profit. But YouTube CEO disagrees. Neal Mohan, Youtube CEO gave his testimony for Google’s Antitrust trial and mentioned that Google has been fair and Google faces plenty AdTech competition. That might be true for Google, YouTube has definitely benefited from having access to Google’s In-house Adtech platform. The traditional streaming platforms are only starting to build their ad platforms and catching up to YouTube’s ad offerings.
You may ask, Why is Youtube now part of streaming wars? Because like Drake they have been sending shots at Streaming platforms. Last week, It became even clearer that YT is coming for streaming. The platform launched new feature for creators to transform video playlists into TV series with Episodes and Season categories. It has very identical look to most TV Show pages on Netflix and Amazon Prime. This behaviour isn’t healthy for streaming platforms.
But they are on their worst behaviour in terms of advertising push. Users aren’t happy with these launches or creators pushing ads:
Server-side ad injection to fight ad blockers.
YouTube pause ads are also here and the user response isn’t the best.
Meanwhile YouTube shared with The Verge that Pause ads are actually designed to let the company offer users a “less interruptive” experience, but it didn’t tell Verge that its normal ads will appear any less frequently as a result.
The Story on the creator-side advertising isn’t different: In his latest video, Drew Gooden, Internet Culture Critic/Creator shared his frustrations with creators doing a bad job of advertising brands in YouTube videos.
Similarly after launch of Lunchly, A new kids food product from MrBeast, KSI and Logan Paul. YouTuber DANTDM made a controversial tweet about state of Youtubers in reference to launch of Lunchly.
The winner and the leaders are on their worst behaviour. What’s next?
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The Youtuber to Mainstream Personality pipeline
The strategy of building a parasocial relationship with your audience and then going silent to only show up at mainstream events. I'm talking about Emma Chamberlain, Lilly Singh, MatPat, Casey Neistat, Liza Koshy, Bo Burnham, MKBHD, and others.
The obvious: The list above features creators that have been doing what they do for years. They grew millions of subscribers that made it hard for mainstream media to ignore their work.
The Not-so obvious: Their content production went down and they primarily focused on one specific factor (art, media, fashion, or fitness) that earned them respect from their peers.
Emma Chamberlain wasn't another creator with access to mainstream. She editorialized her fashion identity to make sure her words were taken seriously. Her words and conversational skills brought her to the mainstream, but she had to acquire a different trait to stay mainstream and respected.
Not every creator does this. Lilly Singh didn't primarily change her style, and audiences didn't like how nothing changed with the format change.
This is a problem that many creators face; everyone wants to produce what brought them to that big stage. But the medium is the message; it doesn't matter that your process remained the same. The message is going to change with the medium.
MatPat's success is all thanks to his ability to connect strongly with media. One piece of media that made him a success was Five Nights at Freddy's; his series on the movie/game became an integral part of the overall lore surrounding FNAF. Mat ended up starring in the 2023 movie inspired by FNAF. (A good watch on MatPat’s strategy and Homage vs Ripoff movie/art inspiration argument)
Mat's success is more mainstream than other YouTubers, but the formula hasn't changed. The easiest way for creators to be distinct is by attaching themselves to an existing piece of media or lore to succeed in the space.
The piece of media/IP with the most people involved in growing it as a business will eventually lead to more success for a creator. Ex: Minecraft and Roblox.
Bo Burnham's focus on artistic messages and intentions behind the content brought him to mainstream. What Burnham shared in 2009 about his process is a rare insight: "I try and write satire that's well-intentioned. But those intentions have to be hidden. It can't be completely clear, and that's what makes it comedy."
I say that because many mainstream non-creator comedians are busy complaining instead of sharing wisdom with others.
MKBHD and Liza Koshy showed industry professionalism, and it only grew with their journey. Compared to someone like KSI, they have shown incredible progression.
In an interview with Jon Youshaei, Liza shares incredible advice for creators: 'Script with space for improv'. While that was in reference to her media creation process, another smaller creator using this insight in his content is Steezy Kane; you can watch his interview on the Digital Spaghetti channel.
The reason I'm not including Mr. Beast, Logan Paul, PewDiePie, and a few other creators in the list is 'Acceptance'. PewDiePie and other creators have been brought to the mainstream for money. They are part of the creator group that industry people invite to get exposure, not because they accept or respect them.
If creators want acceptance, they focus on the elements that are respected by the industry. That's what Bo Burnham, Liza Koshy, and others on the list have done. Don't forget talents like Issa Rae and Donald Glover with an early YouTuber identity.
The Mr.Beast production document is what’s wrong with creators economy
The elements that earn creators respect were hard to find in the leaked MrBeast document titled ‘How to succeed in MrBeast Production”.
Jimmy’s pdf isn’t a rulebook and he clearly mentions the reader of this document needs to repeat this sentence three times: I will apply everything I read with a grain of salt.
He also mentions, “I could make a separate book for creative, a separate book for production, a separate book for editors, etc. but I think that’d be dumb. Everything we do at MrBeast productions is interconnected and the more you understand about what others are doing and trying to accomplish, the better set up for success you will be. So this will be information about all parts of MrBeast productions and I advise everyone to read it in its entirety.”
The review below acknowledges that it isn’t a rulebook but also takes in the new context surrounding the pdf: Everyone treating the document like a secret to good content/media production.
1. The Goal is to make the best Youtube videos.
Jimmy's emphasis on the idea of creating content native to a specific platform is good advice. And he's right about creators forgetting why they create content on YouTube and for YT audiences.
He's correct. But you have to acknowledge the general consensus surrounding creating for YouTube. What is the best YouTube video? Is it a MrBeast video?
The advice regarding creating platform-native content often leads people to templatized content. It's not the fault of MrBeast. This advice is given by tons of people, and gurus often use it to sell templates, courses, thumbnail title lists, and more.
Overall, it's good advice, respecting the medium and platform.
2. Idc how traditional media does things
This section from his pdf is too uninformed. Jimmy goes on a rant about how he doesn’t want to be Hollywood. And goes on to say, “99% of movies or tv shows would flop on Youtube. On top of that they'd be wildly unprofitable, have no flexibility, and long lead times that can’t adapt to trends.”
This is probably the most ill-informed take I have heard from any YouTuber. The thousands of people trying to upload pirated movies are doing it for nobody. Plus, hundreds of YT movie channels with clips are dead.
First, traditional media has shaped online viewers and continues to do so.
Second, the new era of YouTube creators is winning using insights and practices used by traditional media. MrBeast and other creators can say they are anti-Hollywood. The only thing making their videos work is Hollywood-inspired editing, excluding money and cringe.
The focus on cinematic elements and Hollywood-inspired video filming only leads to better work. And it isn't as time-consuming as MrBeast makes it out to be. A single element inspired by cinema culture can help. Johnny Harris with his custom soundtracks, Vox Media with their visual storytelling, Patrick H. Willems with long TV show-like intros, Dodford using popular music to enhance the story.
The list goes on… I don't have a problem with MrBeast having a different style. But creators are ruining YouTube by neglecting the true elements that make media better. Example: Tyler Oliveria, A creator inspired by Mr.Beast’s process and once featured in Mr.Beast video as subscriber. He is now an investigative creator with over 6 million subscribers and still uses MrBeast-like style to spread false information and cringe content.
MrBeast’s creative process creates more creators like him. That’s the problem. When you listen and learn how Martin Scorsese, Stanley Kubrick or Andrei Tarkovsky work, you don’t create like them. You create something different that you want or desire to create.
3. What makes a Youtube video viral?
Mr.Beast shares three metrics you need to care about is Click Thru Rate (CTR), Average View Duration (AVD), and Average View Percentage (AVP).
He's not wrong. These are the key metrics to track, but please don't feel discouraged by a decline in CTR, AVD, or AVP. Analyze your own behavior as a viewer; not everyone thinks critically about quitting or watching a video till the end. Most randomly turn off their phone and switch apps.
But as a creator, you can be overthinking your metrics. That will only lead you to hyper-optimization of your videos or thumbnails. There are a few creators that are adding 100 different elements to a single thumbnail and leading people to nothing. Be mindful!
Mr.Beast’s content structure is identical to typical storytelling structure
Jimmy (Mr.Beast): After the first minute of content you will have what we call minutes 1 thru 3. This is where you have to transition from hype to execution (generally). Stop telling people what they will be watching and start showing them.
We also want to do something around the 3 minute mark called a 3 minute re-engagement. Usually at the 6 minute mark we will include another re-engagement that is highly interesting but needs a little more explanation and will push the story in the back half of the video.
Many videos have been killed because the back half content was ass lol. But in general once you have someone for 6 minutes they are super invested in the story and probably in what I call a “lull”. They are watching the video without even realizing they are watching a video. Typically the not as good content would be in the back half of the video. Don’t ever signal the end of the video unless it’s to build hype for the prize or payoff at the end of the video. This is also where long explanation bits can live and if something unexpected happens or things don’t go to plan that can be turned into content.
Storytellers: This is an extension of Three-act structure, combined with Freytag’s Pyramid.
Is this ruining Youtube? No. But people will benefit a lot if they used the storytelling structures instead of copying everything a creator says.
4. Creating Content
A review of advice mentioned in chapter 2 of the document, the brackets and sub-bullets include my review of the Mr.Beast’s text:
Get rid of Netflix and Hulu and watch tons of Youtube, it will without a doubt in my mind make you more successful here. (Good advice)
A lot of things need to happen before you can start working on it. The big things would probably be you need a thumbnail sketch and creative on your team to write the video. (Storyboarding advice)
There is research suggesting we think with our hands as much as our brains. Brainstorming and storyboarding with a pen and drawing helps a lot.
Video Everything. I really want us to see producing as a team job, not a solo thing. Which is why it’s important you video everything critical (and also anything you think people would ask about).
It’s a pretty viral advice on Internet, corporate brands are being advised to have a structure like The Office. But it’s not sustainable, this advice is exploitation 101.
Don’t just tell people on your team or me why something is good. It’s infinitely more valuable to tell us why it’s not good. (Good advice)
People always assume money is the answer and if we just spend more money we can give Jimmy what he wants. Which is wrong, creativity is the answer. Here is an example I use all the time with our gaming team. They love to give away money every video. But. Which sounds cooler to you as a prize for a gaming video. $20,000 or a year’s supply of doritos? To me doritos is so much funnier and I think our audience would find it fucken hilarious. (Good advice)
But Idk if a year’s supply of Doritos (Product) is a creative idea. It’s done to death.
The worst thing you could ever do when you need something for your critical component is email someone at the company. The best is to talk to them in real life. It’s very important you know when to call people for stuff, grab them in real life, and when to text them. The lower the form of communication the more miscommunication you will face. (Typical advice)
This is corporate talk, most creators on YT don’t have time or resources to talk to brands in real-life. Meanwhile Mr.Beast was recently exposed by Dogpack404 for going further and further if one person at a company said no. He can do that but a smaller influencer/creator would literally get blacklisted for bad behaviour.
Consultants are literally cheat codes.
Yes, they are. If they are not your friends trying to be consultants.
5. Creative
Mr.Beast shares, “We are a creative first production company. Because when creative leads the vision of the shoot, the product is always better.”
Is that true? You decide. But here’s something to worry about:
Jimmy shares goal of their content is to excite him. He shares, “That may sound weird to some of you, especially if you’re new but to me it’s what’s most important. If I'm not excited to get in front of that camera and film the video, it’s just simply not going to happen. I’m not fake and I will be authentic, that’s partly why the channel does so well. And if i’m not excited by the video, we’re fucked.”
This mentality exists in most creative people: creating for yourself, not the audience. This gives a creative person ultimate pleasure. But that's not exactly what Jimmy is talking about or getting out of it. Because he is creating for an audience, and it's the creative standards he is talking about. It's creative pressure, not pleasure.
Creative pressure is what many creators feel today, and it often leads to them getting depressed or reaching a new low in terms of their content. There are so many creators I once followed for great content, but they just never got better.
Mr.Beast on making Good Content: The problem with what I’m writing here is that good content is limitless. Literally anything can make good content. Let’s take a baby doll for example. You can see who can throw it the farthest with their left hand out of a group of 5 people. Watching them throw a baby doll with their bad hand and funny sound effects is fucken hilarious.
Jimmy very frequently switches between being structural and being extreme about content creation. Even though he has structure and strategies to make videos better, he goes back to ‘Anything is content’ mentality, which is basically do extreme and loud content for success.
Mr.Beast is a product of generic social media creator and brand culture. Being loud, extreme and entertaining is the ultimate creative strategy.
Measuring content: Jimmy reshares the advice on studying CTR, AVD, and AVP of uploaded videos.
Brand Deals Are Content: Mr.Beast shares, “If you watch a lot of youtube you’ll probably notice that when someone does a brand deal it’s boring and sounds like they’re reading a script. We take a different approach to brand deals, we like to integrate them into the content so it doesn’t nuke our retention and boosts conversion.”
This approach is better but your viewers aren’t dumb, most of them recognise the difference between an ad read and script. Unless they are 10-16 year old kids or you don’t disclose at all, which is not ethical.
Understand Culture: What you consume on social media, when you watch youtube, tv, the games you play, etc. are what Mr.Beast like to call your information diet. (Good advice but lacks context)
Understand and proofread culture because Mr.Beast used Chris Tyson (Alleged Pedophile) as an example of person who understands culture and is funny. It’s important for creators and brands to check how someone uses culture and why are they even interested in that specific culture.
6. The Lies
The document ends with few statements about how Mr.Beast produces, few of them have already been debunked:
We don’t fake things. (Lie)
Make sure to prep contestants and try to create an environment where they feel comfortable talking. (Sued & Lie)
You can’t fake intensity in videos. (Lie)
Run your content by as many people as possible for inspiration on how you could make it even better. (Potential lie)
Throughout the document, he lied many times about his process. These are the only ones mentioned at the end.
How does this leaked document explain state of YouTube?
Gimmicks, Desperateness and lack of creativity.
The Document was leaked a months ago and Rosanna Pansino did an incredible video decoding it. Fun Fact: She was concerned and was critical of what Mr.Beast mentioned in the document. Fast forward to last week, Online gurus and marketers are treating this document as ‘Success guide to Youtube’. It’s dumb and that made me review this document.
What’s being described in the document is for his production team. But you have to realise his team and the guests who read this document are other Youtubers with millions of followers. The practices mentioned in his document are likely being utilised by others in his connection.
Second, The influence goes long way. Mr.Beast needs to acknowledge and call out bad creators using his style and methods to gain views. As
from Trend Mill shares “I’ve always had a hump with him. Perhaps the first-ever “I gave $5,000 to a homeless person” was genuine. It was at least novel. But the moment he realized this generosity could be manufactured to drive engagement, the game was up. From there, “inauthentic authenticity” became his brand.” Jimmy’s followers aren’t even doing the inauthentic authenticity, they simply steal content ideas or fool kids with fake content for no donations, only personal benefit.Last, The State of Youtube is connected to Mr.Beast and other creators targeting kids and teenagers. Because the platform itself is profiting from Kids viewership and was recently exposed for doing a secret deal to target ads for Instagram to teenagers on YouTube.
The Reaction Creator Problem
Reaction creators on YouTube and Twitch are more viral than original creators. Audiences have a stronger parasocial relationship with reactors who react to content they like. Original creators do get more exposure through reaction content, but the revenue-sharing isn't there. Often, creators get angry and simply start fights with reaction creators/channels. Drama starts, but it could be avoided.
Instagram recently launched a new feature that finds reposted content and replaces it with original content in recommendations. The algorithm starts to push creators' original videos. YouTube should launch a similar feature to push original content in recommendation feeds.
Reaction creators are adding alternative value to your content. YouTube and creators should allow a value transfer from one creator to another. Instead of punishing reaction creators, this could help everyone grow.
P.S. There are a few reaction creators that simply steal content and add nothing. We are ignoring them, but YouTube needs to pay strong attention to them and remove their content.
Youtube shorts, A recycling ground
The Shorts feed is filled with clips from longer videos, and the original short-form videos that work are using 2018-19 editing styles. You hardly find any recent Internet culture or trend-relevant videos when they are happening. If TikTok users troll Instagram Reels lovers for being a week late on trend spotting, YouTube Shorts is months away from capturing a trend from last week.
The subscribers earned from YouTube Shorts hardly convert into long-form content viewers. I can't recall the creator's name, but they had 9-10 million followers gained solely from YT Shorts. The short-form content was performing well, but most longer videos had on average less than 30k views.
Creators with wholesome and relatable content works a little better. During my research, I found that creators like @therealsamalkhatib and Pushpek Sidhu have found a bigger audience through YT Shorts and they are simply repurposing their existing TikTok videos.
YT Shorts has an even younger base of audience, primarily kids. The brainrot and gamified content with two screens works even better on Shorts feed. It’s cooking brains of Gen Alpha kids.
A recent study analysing performance of Youtube Shorts vs Regular videos in 2021-2022 found that for some categories, such as Music, Film & Animation, Gaming, and, to a lesser extent, Science & Technology, users prefer to watch RVs than Shorts. Some categories, such as Comedy and Education, initially generated a high engagement for Shorts before slowly loosing this advantage at the relative benefit of RVs. Conversely, for Nonprofits & Activism, which initially generated a limited engagement for Shorts, there was a progressive increase, eventually reaching 12 times more views for Shorts than RVs by the second semester of 2022. Finally, the Entertainment and the People & Blogs categories exhibit a ratio systematically high and above the reference ratio.
The research concluded that shorts mainly belong to lighthearted, entertainment categories, while RVs (Regular videos) touch more diverse content, including news, politics, and education. This disparity in content production is reflected in content consumption. Indeed, the supremacy of Shorts in terms of views is less striking for entertainment-related categories than for the others. In art-related categories, Shorts barely attracted more views than RVs.
MatPat also made a video about State of Youtube shorts and his review represents how most people feel about the feature. Cringe and possibly dumb, Youtube needs to do better job with their algorithm.
Last year, The Financial Times reported that Senior Youtube staffers were worried about YT Shorts negative impact on platform’s core business.
Conclusion: YouTube Shorts in a weird place and brands + creators need to do detailed research before jumping on the short-form format.
Is Youtube right-wing pipeline real or not?
The answer varies.
The researches like this famous one (2019) about Youtube recommendations leading people to extreme right-wing or propaganda are here. But they don’t provide a clear answer. In 2021, Youtube replied to all the studies and media coverage in a blogpost, which I couldn’t find. But here is the Vox’s article on the issue, “YouTube argues those stats are a sign of progress, and shared that the “violative view rate” is down 70 percent since 2017 thanks to improvements the company has made in its content moderation-focused artificial intelligence.”
Another research from last year examining if Youtube recommendation algorithm shows right-wing content bias found that for users on the far-left and far-right, the home page recommendations are more likely to be of the same ideology, potentially building echo chambers. Overall the study reveals Youtube recommendations don’t organically lead users to right-wing content. But it also shares:
Again, although the absolute majority of recommendationsare not to problematic content, these patterns suggest that the various radical, conspiratorial, or extremist channels are in fact recommended more frequently the longer the user engages with the platform. Because these channels were not used in the sock puppet training, these organic recommendations to problematic content not previously seen are disturbing. - Auditing YouTube’s recommendation system for ideologically congenial, extreme, and problematic recommendations
The research above came out in September 2023. The Oxford research from August shared a different sentiment:
The study shares that recommendations made by the algorithm with regard to US political videos are asymmetric with a skew towards the Left, both with respect to the speed by which one may enter a political persona, as well as the difficulty in escaping these filter bubbles.
They also found that YouTube’s effort to reduce the amount of extremist content shown to users via the recommendation algorithm, users are indeed pulled away from the extremes on both sides of the political aisle.
- YouTube’s recommendation algorithm is left-leaning in the United States
Overall, there are different angles to what roles the algorithm plays in exposing users to far-right or far-left content. One thing studies don’t factor is channel sizes/creators and ongoing political events effecting what type of media gets a wider push.
Studies don’t factor that, but transparency.tube once did. You can visit the website to get an idea of who was more mainstream on Youtube and whom did they represent, far-right/left, woke, socialists and other categories.
The Wired also published new data that highlights audience sizes of right-wing and left-wing influencers. It’s not core to YouTube but some people on the list are highly-active on the video platform.
To End, A YouTube creator made this video “I Let YouTube Autoplay Until It Turned Me Alt-Right”. You can read the studies while watching his video trying to reach alt-right content on YouTube.
Making YouTube better through few suggestions
I have gained over 40-50,000 followers from my instagram series recommending YT videos and creators that make others a better creator or social media marketer. We are on Day 12, you can follow along on Instagram because this is the only time I will be sharing the recommendations in the newsletter:
To be continued.. The path to Youtube success goes through Hollywood, Human Stories and Perspective. Not templates and cheap tactics. It goes same for advertisers and creators, respect the media identity of your work. Your brand will eventually gain a strong identity.
I read Jimmy‘s PDF and and it felt like it was written by a complete narcissist
What a great write up! I’ve found myself writing about YouTubers twice in a row… it seems like a few of them are cashing in at the moment — do they know something we don’t?