I recently learned that YouTube doesn’t always choose the thumbnail with the highest watch-time share. In my test, one thumbnail received 41%, while the first received 29%. However, YouTube marked them all as having performed well because the difference wasn’t statistically conclusive. When there’s no clear winner, YouTube keeps the first thumbnail as the default. So, don’t assume the selected thumbnail performed best, check the results and use your own judgment.

If your view count jumped recently, check this before you celebrate. I uploaded a Home Assistant tutorial two days ago. The dashboard says 710 views — second best of my last ten uploads. Then I opened the engagement tab: 170 engaged views. Both numbers are right. They're counting different things. Since 24 August, YouTube counts a view from the very first frame including a video autoplaying on someone's Home page that they never chose to watch. An engaged view is someone who clicked, or stayed past the opening seconds. The big number is the one on the front of the card now. The part worth knowing: your CTR and average view duration didn't get watered down. Those are still worked out on engaged views. So if your views jumped and your retention looks the same as always, nothing is broken — you're just reading two different denominators. Two days in, 170 is small. I'd still rather know it's 170 and know they came from search, than see 710 and not know which half was real. If your numbers jumped since late August, this is probably why. What are you seeing on yours? More details here blog.youtube/inside-youtube/engaged-views-youtube-explained/

Hey guys, so I've been on that YouTube grind and one of the things that I wanted to build was a hook extractor. What you'll need is: - VidIQ (Paid / Optional): We use this to look up the "keyword" you're aiming for. If you don't have it, it'll run the search automatically. - yt-dlp (Free): This allows us to scrape the transcriptions for free at scale. I pretty much built this into a Claude skill that you can download. Feel free to download it here: 👉 https://github.com/the-vibe-marketing-lab/mos-yt-skills/tree/main/mos-yt-hook-extractor Just point your AI to this link and tell it to download and symlink this skill. You can invoke the skill by typing "/mos-yt-hook-extractor {keyword} {no_of_videos_to_analyse} The way it works is: Search Keyword -> Scrape Top Competitors (I did 77, but you can limit this) -> Analyse "Hooks" -> Provide Report I am continuously iterating on this, feel free to see updates, but I figured a lot of you would find this quite valuable if hooks is one thing that you'd like to focus on! Enjoy!

Been trying to create a scripting system that is AI-powered, but I can't seem to get the AI to nail it. I'm basically doing: - Title idea (backed by KWR) - Thumbnail (Pre-created to test) Then when it comes to scripting it's: - Written out hook (different variations) - 3-5 main talking points (+ 3-5 points for each main talking point) - CTA / Outro Do you guys script your entire video, or sort of riff based on talking points? Curious to know what they are

I started with one word: home assistant. vidIQ shows about 115,000 searches a month, competition high. For a big channel that might be worth a swing. For a channel my size, under 5,000 subs, a big number on its own isn't an opportunity. It just means competition is already there. So I went down the list: home assistant dashboard — about 47,500 a month, competition low Better. But here's the part I actually want you to take. I added the hardware. home assistant raspberry pi — about 8,000 a month. 8,000 people asking a specific question beats 100,000 asking a vague one. Not because of the number. Because I can answer the specific one better than anyone else on that page. Then I went one step deeper and added the version — Pi 5 — and got about 3,000 a month. That's the level the title comes from. Not my words for the thing. The words the viewer actually typed. The whole thing took under four minutes. I went from a topic to a short list of real phrases, saved so I can come back to it whenever. Next step is picking one and writing the title around it. Mine's with the editor now — Home Assistant on Raspberry Pi. I'll try to post how it does either way. Drop a term you're thinking about and one line on why you'd pick it. If you need help finding ideas join me this coming Tuesday at Idea Hour