What Will These Ad Updates Mean For Creators? (Big Changes)

Key Takeaways

YouTube has just dropped a new monetization feature that determines where ads are placed within creators videos. And some people are saying it's the best thing that could have happened and some people absolutely hate it. Let's talk about it. What's up everybody? I'm Nathan and today we're going to be talking about peak points. You heard that right. That is the new monetization feature that YouTube is focusing on right now. YouTube is working with Gemini, Google's AI, to now determine the most ideal place, I guess you could say, to put ads for viewers. And they're using what they're calling peak points. The idea here is that the Gemini AI is looking through huge data sets and determining the most meaningful moments in your videos, in my videos, and in all of our videos here on the platform. the emotional highs, the punchlines, the reveals, everything. Those are going to be the places now that YouTube is placing ads. So, imagine the best part of the video. You know, you're working up to the heightened part of the video, sort of the the peak, the most exciting or interesting or engaging part, and boom, you get an ad. Right off the bat, that doesn't sound ideal. So, why would YouTube do this? YouTube wants people to watch more, right? They want people to engage in more content. So, why would they put the ads in the pretty much worst place possible? It's a little bit deeper than that. So, let me explain. Have you ever been scrubbing through a YouTube video and you see this at the bottom of the video? That little peak where it just looks like YouTube showing us there's a little bit more engagement. That is essentially, from what I understand, how they're going to be determining or similarly how they're going to be determining where to place these ads. Now, recently, YouTube has made some updates that have allowed us and them, generally speaking, to place the ads in better spots throughout videos so that we don't get cut off mid-sentence or something like that. Something that's really jarring for the user. Uh YouTube does want people to watch more YouTube. And so, what they're doing here is they're trying to find the segments of the video with the highest engagement metrics like uh likes, rewinds, watchtime spikes. All of these things are called peak points. Like I mentioned earlier, the idea here is that the viewer is as engaged as possible watching the content that they are watching so that when the ad plays, they are more likely to watch longer on the ad, potentially click through on an ad, uh, and make you as the creator a little bit more money. Is it going to turn out that way? We don't know yet. It's hard to say. But I think the idea here is that YouTube wants to catch people at the height of the experience in the video because they're less likely to click away and they're less likely to take some other uh action that would be negative toward your video and toward the ad. Basically, viewers are going to see ads during these highinterest moments, which in my opinion is far less jarring than randomly throughout the video, mid-sentence, or just in the most terrible places possible. I do like that there's a little bit of data here behind how people are going to be watching. And I would imagine that YouTube has been running tests on this just to see how people react to ad placements at different times. Now, in the past, I don't know if YouTube has always intentionally been doing this, but it feels to me like when I watch YouTube, uh, I will be watching a video and then I get to one of those points in the video where I'm really, really engaged and boom, there's an ad. It feels like they've been doing that for a while now. Now, whether they've actually come out and said it, I don't think so. But I think they've been testing this cuz I have personally noticed this. And honestly, it makes me more willing to sit through the ad if there's something that I'm sort of waiting for on the other side in that emotionally high moment. Uh, and so I know some people are going to hate this as a viewer. I don't personally like it, but what I will say is it does keep me engaged in the video a little bit longer uh without clicking away from the ad. Unless I'm super annoyed, uh, then I may click away. The obvious drawback here is that some people are going to feel like this totally destroys intense or emotional parts of their video. And to be honest, that's really fair. Uh it it very likely will. It definitely doesn't interrupt in some of these biggest parts of the video. And so as creators, it may be hard to balance that out. At very least, it's good to me that there are for those people who really hate ads, there are options like premium so they don't have to deal with these ads in the middle of videos. Uh, you may be like me who doesn't like to pay for things extra, so I just watch the ads, deal with them. But a lot of the people who really hate the ads the most won't have to deal with them. I think that there's a little bit of an optimistic angle here, though. If done right, this could actually end up being less annoying than those other mid-sentence cutins for midroll ads and other things like that. Um, as far as monetization goes, creators may see a boost in monetization. Like I mentioned earlier, these ads and highly engaged moments will likely have higher CPMs. Uh, and I think it's going to encourage us as creators to do a better job with our storytelling. A lot of times we just rely on doing sort of the bare minimum to get by. You know, we're like, "Okay, I need to get a video out." And so, we'll just do exactly what we need to do to get the video out. Um, but if we spend a little bit more time in the planning of our videos, in the prepping and the outlining, and then even the cutting of the edit, we're going to do a better job of making these emotionally high moments to get people more engaged. And then when we do get the ad shown, people will be more likely to stick around if we did a good job storytelling. So, this is going to put a little bit more pressure on creators. But the positive spin on it, which I always try and keep, is that hopefully it will just help us do a better job. Uh, people have been seeing ads on YouTube for a long time. Uh, and like I said, I've noticed that YouTube has put ads in some of the best parts of videos before and I've dealt with it. And so I think people will continue to deal with it. But I think it's important for us as creators to know that this is happening intentionally from YouTube so that we can be aware and so we can handle it the best way possible. Something that you can do right now to help you prepare for this is to go into your own videos and look at the retention graphs. Where are those peaks and valleys in your video? Where are the places that people are more engaged? Where are the places that they're less engaged? and what can you do to help people be more engaged? When you see those little peaks, those spikes up in your retention graph, look and see what you did there and then see if you can do that in another video. But even better, try and make it a bigger, better peak so that people are willing to stick around even through an advertisement uh regardless of that advertisement. Um, overall, I hope that this can help creators. I hope that we do get better CPMs and RPMs. I hope that we can do better with our storytelling. Let me know what you think about this below. Do you think this is going to impact creators negatively or do you think it's just going to kind of end up being the new norm and that most people won't notice? I would love to hear what you have to say. Thanks for watching this video. If you want more creator news, if you want more creator education, uh growth on YouTube is what we do here best. Uh again, I'm Nathan. We'll see you guys.