The New Rules of YouTube (2025) | Edited Transcript

Colin and Samir speak with YouTube strategist Paddy Galloway about ideas, packaging, experimentation, audience expectations, and how creators and brands can build repeatable shows on YouTube.

CHAPTER TIMESTAMPS

00:00 Paddy Galloway, the view-maximizer role, and what changed on YouTube

02:37 YouTube becomes television, Hollywood, radio, and music in one platform

04:50 Why competition is higher but small channels can still grow quickly

06:51 Ideas and packaging become as important as production quality

07:44 Case studies in widening an idea without abandoning the subject

09:22 How small title and thumbnail changes create large differences in reach

12:05 The click-and-watch framework for titles, thumbnails, and retention

15:49 Balancing artistic instinct with formats the audience can understand

19:36 A five-day process for producing and testing 50 video ideas

20:18 The Red Bull case study and the mountain-bike-versus-drone format

25:50 Turning proven visual contrasts into repeatable packaging systems

34:20 Competition, expected outcomes, and learning from controlled experiments

40:10 The 80% rule for protecting a channel while testing new directions

42:02 Why deliberate experimentation should include expected performance

42:34 What the recommendation algorithm rewards and what success actually means

45:32 Feedback loops, emotional reactions, and evaluating a video after release

49:52 Why brand channels need creator strategy rather than corporate uploads

53:49 Brands optimize for audience fit, recruiting, products, and reputation as well as views

1:00:36 Brands as media companies and creators as potential in-house showrunners

1:18:25 Hooks that confirm the click, supply context, and flow into the story

1:24:11 How short-form and long-form ideas differ in premise and audience promise

1:26:27 Celebrity and athlete channels: accessibility, mystique, and sustainable production

1:33:40 Low-lift formats, brand-owned shows, and opportunities for airlines and automakers

1:36:05 Closing thoughts and an annual YouTube strategy roundtable

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Full video:

Colin and Samir speak with YouTube strategist Paddy Galloway about ideas, packaging, experimentation, audience expectations, and how creators and brands can build repeatable shows on YouTube.

TRANSCRIPT

[00:00–02:30]

Colin and Samir / Paddy Galloway: You are responsible for 10 billion views on YouTube. Is that right? If we added it all up in the history of me doing YouTube, probably pushing 50 billion views. Wow. Can you break down why that title and thumbnail work? I’ve never been more confident uploading YouTube videos than I was with that video. Really? But how we packaged it could be the difference between it getting a couple million views and 28 million. Brand YouTube channels are corporate video dumping grounds. I’m going to tell you about the most recent upload to the Target YouTube channel. Great. Wow. Today on the Colin and Samir Show, we’re joined by YouTube expert and strategist Paddy Galloway.

[02:30–05:00]

Colin and Samir / Paddy Galloway: Now, we first came across Paddy Galloway as fans of his channel. He was uploading breakdowns of creators like MrBeast, KSI, and Ryan Trahan, talking about why their channels were so successful. One of the most interesting things about Paddy is that not only is he working with creators on their videos, but he’s also working with brands on their YouTube strategies. For example, he works directly with Red Bull on their videos as well as the Philadelphia Eagles. One of the most fun parts of this conversation is talking about how brands are going to now occupy space on YouTube. In this conversation, we dive really deep into the strategies that top creators are using to grow their channels. We talk about ideas and what makes a good idea for YouTube, how to package it correctly, and we also talk about where YouTube is heading next.

[05:00–07:30]

Colin and Samir / Paddy Galloway: All right, now, for our conversation with Paddy Galloway. Paddy, welcome to the show. Thank you so much. It’s been a long time coming, and I’m excited to be here. You refer to yourself as a view maximizer. Is that right? Yeah, view maximizer or something—view maximizer. You know, we get views—that’s our kind of catchphrase for everything I do. I think in this industry, it’s important to know what you’re good at. There are so many different things I could describe myself as, but when I really trace back what I do with the people we work with and what I’ve spent the bulk of my life doing, it’s getting more views for YouTube videos. So, yeah, the view maximizer—I’ll take it. You’ve also been doing this for a while. You were a creator yourself on your own channel. That’s how we got connected; that’s how we met. Yeah, yeah. We exchanged DMs so long ago. I mean, this is going to sound crazy and it’s a beautiful thing to think about how long YouTube has been around, but I believe I posted my first video in 2006 on the first channel I ever built, and that’s nearly 20 years ago. So, it’s kind of crazy to think that YouTube’s been around for that long. And I know you guys also started in the same way, so long ago. We’ve all been on the platform for over a decade obsessing over it. It’s a beautiful thing. And this year, we’re celebrating 20 years of YouTube now.

[07:30–10:00]

Colin and Samir / Paddy Galloway: Yeah, so it’s super interesting that we’re at this 20-year mark. I think it’s an interesting place to start about the evolution of YouTube—from when we first uploaded our videos to what it is today. I think there was this assumption when we first started our channel that maybe this could be the modern version of television. But for that to play out, it actually took a really long time. Where do you think YouTube is today? I mean, I’m going to sound very bullish about YouTube, as I’m sure we all are here at this table, but I really think that for the longest time the mainstream sort of looked at YouTube as this kind of place for internet clips—vloggers running pranks—and then MrBeast doing big stunts. But the more you look at the play YouTube is making, and you listen to what Neil Mohan, the CEO, is saying, YouTube is the biggest streaming platform in the world. So YouTube is TV nowadays. The production level people are putting into their YouTube videos at the highest level is almost movie-esque. So YouTube is kind of Hollywood. Even the stat that surprised me was that YouTube is now the platform with the highest podcast viewership. More people watch podcasts on YouTube in the U.S. than any other platform, which means YouTube is kind of the new radio. I am very bullish on YouTube being a major winner in the future of entertainment. That’s the exciting thing about being still so early in it, in my opinion.

[10:00–12:30]

Colin and Samir / Paddy Galloway: You didn’t even mention music. Yeah, YouTube Music is a massive platform. So, yeah, you’re right—it is a one-stop shop for entertainment, which does make it harder to compete. Right? In a world now where a massive podcast drops on the same day as thousands of other videos. I think there’s a stat that only 12% of YouTube videos crack a thousand views. That doesn’t surprise me, but it’s crazy to think. It’s a good place to start—in today’s world, what can break through? Yeah, great question. I think when we look at where YouTube has come from, even five or 10 years ago, it was still so focused on individual personalities—people early to do YouTube who built audiences through that. Lots were really talented—for example, Casey Neistat. But in recent years, it has become more of a strategy space. You have to really dig into the strategic sides of YouTube. It’s not enough to just be funny and interesting on camera. That helps, but nowadays top creators are entrepreneurs, data analysts, managers of teams, and leaders. When we think about how competitive YouTube is now, there’s probably never been a point in history with more good videos being uploaded every week. But the eyeballs are bigger too—the total audience is larger. The YouTube algorithm has also gotten much better at letting the cream rise to the top and becoming a true meritocracy compared to 5 or 10 years ago. In the work I do, I see smaller creators focusing on the right things and the new rules of YouTube getting crazy results quickly. So yes, it’s more competitive than ever, but if you can deliver a really interesting title, thumbnail, and video, the multiplier effect of the YouTube algorithm and how far it can reach—even for a small channel—has never been greater. It’s a balancing act: competition is higher, but the algorithm is more sophisticated, the market is bigger, and when you hit it right, it’s frightening how quickly you can grow a channel.

[12:30–15:00]

Colin and Samir / Paddy Galloway: What does it take to hit it right? When you say “hit it right” and you’re working with creators or brands, what has to come together so that you’ve maxed all your views? What’s happening? Totally. I’ve said this before, but people look at YouTube as a video platform and say, “It’s all about the video—the content, cameras, and production.” I know this isn’t a new talking point, but YouTube is not a video platform. It’s a click-and-watch platform. The first rule: if they don’t click, they don’t watch. Jimmy said this on our show, and I’ve since realized that’s such an obvious but crucial statement—plain and simple. The second rule: once you’ve earned a click, respect the viewer’s time. Now that they’re inside the video, you have to respect that they gave you their time and essentially introduce a new question if the thumbnail posed one before, so the viewer stays until the end. There has to be a reason for them to invest that time and get value back. The third rule is: do you want more content like this? Every video must answer the question: If you liked one video, do you want more like it? The next video should feel like it, so the viewer continues to engage. For example, that aerospace photographer you mentioned—he probably repeated that format in his next videos. It’s not about making the same video repeatedly, but being empathetic toward the audience’s experience. Most of our viewership comes from browse and suggested feeds, so it’s beyond just clicking and watching. You have to think about the surface where they click—most assume it’s the channel page or when a new video is released, but actually, it’s the home screen or the sidebar next to other videos. You have to reverse engineer: What video is the viewer watching right now that would get them to click on mine? We always say, with “If they don’t click, they don’t watch,” your video should be familiar but also unexpected. Like that aerospace photography video—there’s a lot in the thumbnail that looks like other aerospace photography videos, but the division into three parts creates the unexpected element. In a sea of similar videos, that familiarity plus unexpected element makes it stand out to click. For example, Johnny Harris has a great video and thumbnail that’s similar. I’ll pull it up: “Having Different Income Levels—How Your Life Looks and Feels and Operates Differently Across Those Levels.” Johnny’s video is called “$25,000 Versus $25 Million,” split into three parts—$25,000, $100,000, and $25 million. That’s a clean, classic YouTube example of effective titles and thumbnails.

[15:00–17:30]

Colin and Samir / Paddy Galloway: Thumbnails and titles don’t necessarily have to match exactly, but they suggest a kind of three-step framework that just works. What’s inspiring to me, or at least what gives me hope, is that no matter what your medium is or what your topic is on YouTube, you can use that format. I even think about us—could we do interviews with YouTube creators who have anywhere from zero subscribers to a thousand, or even a million, ten million, or a hundred million? You can just come up with ideas for your channel by hearing me talk about various videos and formats.

What’s so interesting is when you start to realize that as a creator, you’re not limited to what’s happening strictly within your niche. So often, I see people ideating by only looking at what’s working within the same niche. Let’s say the niche is golf. They ask, “How do I ideate?” They go look at all the other golf channels to see what’s working. But are there other niches with some adjacency to golf? Could you take formats from those niches? For instance, our format here, maybe something like a $1 versus $10 versus $100 golf club video—that format can apply across many niches.

It sounds simple, but a lot of our success—through my consulting company and the other things we do—comes from seeing what is working across diverse niches and figuring out what niche-specific format others haven’t tried yet that we could adapt. Also, I think there’s often this feeling of wanting to be original or try something new. But there’s a big difference between taking a format others in your niche have already done and doing it yourself—because then a competing channel might say, “Hey, I did that first,” or an audience member might say, “That’s not original.” However, if, for example, you’re an astrophotography channel and you borrow a format from a totally different niche, it feels fresh and new—maybe in those other niches, the format is saturated and no longer interesting.

[17:30–20:00]

Colin and Samir / Paddy Galloway: There’s a method we talk about quite a bit called “be a magician.” This comes from a conversation we had with a magician who said, “I don’t have to come up with new tricks; I just have to show my tricks to audiences who haven’t seen them before.” That really blew me away because it’s true—the space audience may have never seen that particular format before. Before we started recording, we were talking about permaculture, which is a massive genre on YouTube that I didn’t even know much about. One of your students from your accelerator program had a video with 15 million views by using essentially a versus or before-and-after framework. Can you talk about that video?

Absolutely. That’s one of the craziest videos I’ve ever seen. It was from cohort two of our accelerator program, almost two years ago. The channel is Andrew Millison’s, and he was quite active in the cohort. We didn’t tell him exactly which video to make—it was all on his own accord, so no credit goes to us directly. But he realized from being around other creators, and hearing me talk about how we do YouTube at the highest level, that he could probably package his videos to reach a broader audience.

He made a video about how the UN is holding back the Sahara Desert. If you think about the core of permaculture or horticulture on YouTube, it’s pretty niche and small. But by tying it to the UN and the Sahara Desert, and adding a really interesting thumbnail, he attracted a much broader audience. The thumbnail, which we can show on screen, is so irresistible to click on—half of it shows a completely arid desert, and the other half shows a desert that’s been fully transformed and is green. It’s almost unbelievable.

[20:00–22:30]

Colin and Samir / Paddy Galloway: I clicked on the video somewhat skeptically—wondering if the thumbnail was AI-generated or real. And the first frame of the video showed the lush green desert on the right side, confirming it’s real. That kind of thumbnail, which makes you think “no way,” makes people click. That’s what I always try to create—a thumbnail and title combination that might feel exaggerated or impossible, so you click, but then the video delivers on the promise so viewers feel they made the right decision.

Before we continue, I want to tell you about something real quick. We want to give 100 of you our “50-in-5 YouTube Ideation Sprint” completely free. This is a five-day ideation sprint designed to help you come up with better ideas for your YouTube channel. Here’s how it works: click the link in our description, enter your email, and for five days you’ll get a video teaching you something about titles and thumbnails, plus a prompt pushing you to write 10 ideas for your channel. By the end, you’ll have 50 new ideas. We’re giving away 100 seats for free—just click the link or go to colinandsamir.com/ideas. Now, back to the episode with Paddy.

So you’re responsible for 10 billion views a year on YouTube—is that right? Or more?

Yes, the latest we checked, it’s around 10 billion views per year from clients we work with. If we added up all the views from my entire YouTube career, it’s probably pushing 50 billion views.

One of your clients is Red Bull, which is probably at the forefront of brands operating like creators—a trend we’re likely to see continue rising on YouTube. Among those 10 billion views, there’s one Red Bull video with 28 million views that uses the versus format: “World’s fastest camera drone versus F1 car.” It’s a really clean and simple thumbnail. Can you talk about ideating within that context—working with Red Bull, why you knew it would work, and why it works?

[22:30–25:00]

Colin and Samir / Paddy Galloway: I’ve never been more confident uploading a YouTube video than with that one. Honestly, I didn’t expect it to hit 28 million views because back then maybe the channel was averaging about a million views per video, but I was super confident it would work.

If you look back, all these videos have origin stories. The first advice I ever gave Red Bull on a video was one they did called “Mountain bike versus world’s best camera drone or FPV drone” or something like that, which did really well—around five to ten million views—but that was before we started working with them, about three years ago.

That planted the seed that the versus format works and that fast camera drones are interesting. We also analyzed their channel and saw that Formula 1 content was popular and performing well.

Then we looked at competitive advantages. This applies to brands and even smaller creators—what’s something unique you can offer that others can’t? Red Bull has access to F1 cars, to Max Verstappen, the world’s best F1 driver, and resources to build super fast camera drones.

Putting those pieces together, we thought: how interesting would it be to race the world’s fastest driver in an F1 car against the world’s fastest camera drone to see if the drone could keep up?

The interesting thing about that video, which ties back to your earlier point about title and thumbnail sometimes feeling exaggerated or almost unbelievable, is that the video isn’t actually a race. The drone is following the car.

If the title had been “World’s fastest drone tries to keep up with F1 car,” it probably would have gotten about four million views and felt more like the end of the story—not as captivating.

That’s right, the title “tries to keep up” sounds weaker. Instead, we borrowed from formats that work well on Red Bull’s channel and other channels—like Carwow’s drag race format, with behind-camera angles on unique races like a Bugatti Veyron versus a Ferrari F-150.

[25:00–27:30]

Colin and Samir / Paddy Galloway: We took inspiration from that format. We put a drone and an F1 car on the track, and made what I think is a beautiful thumbnail.

How involved are you in the process of videos like that? Are you and your team there from ideation to final edit?

For videos like that, I see us as strategists. We’re not doing traditional production—we weren’t on set for that video. Instead, we collaborate with Red Bull to build and adapt ideas.

That original concept was born internally at Red Bull by one of their producers, Callum. We worked with it to make sure it was packaged to hit the right viewership goals.

We advise on packaging and title. Before the shoot, producers meet with my team and me to walk through the shoot structure—the “shoot beats”—and figure out what to show. Then we review edits, and finally, we create the thumbnails for Red Bull. For most clients, we don’t make thumbnails, but for Red Bull, my amazing designer Britney, who works with many incredible creators, does them.

I have strong opinions on titles and thumbnails, which sometimes leads to friction with clients. I remember for that specific video that Red Bull was suggesting several title and thumbnail options. I argued that one was good but could get only a million views, while my choice could get 10 million views. It sounds small, but even for such a well-executed video, the packaging can mean the difference between a couple million and 28 million views.

A useful mental framework, which Jimmy (from MrBeast’s team) once shared with us, is: “Pull your packaging to the most exaggerated version of what it is, and then pull it back to what you’re comfortable with.” So start by exploring the most exaggerated version of the concept.

One of my favorite title and thumbnail combos on YouTube is from Veritasium: “Why are there 96 million black balls on this reservoir?” That video has over 100 million views. It has an unbelievable title and thumbnail.

[27:30–30:00]

Colin and Samir / Paddy Galloway: On the flip side, the most boring version would be something like “The 96 million mysterious black balls.” Or simply “How LA protects its water supply,” which would be accurate but have a much smaller audience.

If we were the anti-strategists, aiming to get the fewest views possible, we might have titled that video “How LA addresses its water shortage problem.” Even on Veritasium’s channel, with millions of subscribers, that might have gotten only 500,000 views, compared to the actual video’s 103 million.

It’s about opening a curiosity gap, which is the most important thing. For the audience, some interesting ideation frameworks include superlatives like “fastest,” “biggest,” or “smallest,” which are easy visual words people latch onto. Another classic is versus, like “Ford F-150 versus Rivian,” which immediately pits two things against each other.

We talked about the three-step format—like $1, $10, $100—which is another useful frame.

There’s a famous quote from Seth Godin: “In order to be seen, you must learn how to see.” Spending time on YouTube and clocking what frameworks channels use to capture views is crucial. Write them down and notice patterns like superlatives.

Another successful format we’ve seen over the years is “getting exclusive access” or “getting access to something most people don’t have.” For example, an Irish creator named Darata makes videos investigating secret islands or secret military bases with pollution—he wears a gas mask when he goes there.

Another example is Jesser, the biggest basketball creator, who gets exclusive access to the NBA Finals.

We also did a video recently with wildlife creator Forrest Galante titled “Private tour of secret Indian billionaire’s wildlife sanctuary,” which got 9 million views. Everyone loved it.

Even if a viewer listening says, “I don’t have exclusive access to an Indian billionaire’s private wildlife sanctuary,” maybe you have access to interesting things or can showcase content others can’t.

Going back to our early point on how creators can stand out in 2025 and beyond, I think it’s more important than ever to lock in your competitive advantage. For each client we work with, we actually keep that internally in a document—which is about identifying their unique edge.

[30:00–32:30]

Colin and Samir / Paddy Galloway: Competitive advantage? Like, what do we see as the thing that enables creators to make content that others can’t? A lot of people immediately assume it’s money, access, or resources, and while yes, those can be competitive advantages, quite often it’s simply unique experience or a unique authority to speak on a subject that others cannot. For example, with content I used to make on YouTube—those breakdown videos—they did well, but technically, anyone could make those. But if I make a video about how I got 10 million views with clients or how we work with clients generating 20 million a year in revenue directly from YouTube, only a handful of people in the world can claim that as well.

Even if you don’t have money or special access and you’re creating a title, thumbnail, and concept based on your personal experience and knowledge, sometimes that alone creates enough tension. Like, “Let me see if I believe you as an expert.” For instance, “Here are 10 things you can do to improve your fitness.” I know many videos like that exist, but occasionally one has tension that makes me click because I want to see if I buy your expertise. That tension itself can bring viewers through the door.

What do you think about lists, like six financial tips or six things? Ali Abdaal is a very forward list man. Ali, if you’re listening, hopefully you like being called a list man. He refers to himself as a “forward-thinking list man.” He said to us, “A YouTube video is a title, thumbnail, and a list.” I found that perspective fascinating.

What do you think about titles with a list as the framework? I think if the items you’re showcasing feel unique and interesting for your niche, they really work. Like if you’re in the finance niche and make a video titled “Seven Money Tips to Grow Your Wealth,” that’s generic and probably covered many times before. But “Seven Underrated Saving Tips the Top 1% Use That You Don’t Know”—that’s unique and compelling.

[32:30–35:00]

Colin and Samir / Paddy Galloway: There’s nothing wrong with the listicle format; it’s effective and easy to consume. If the list is a low number—between three and about ten or twelve—you want each item to be unique. But if it’s a big list, sometimes the content can be more generic because there’s so much packed into one video. You see videos like “40 Pieces of Life Advice I Learned Before Turning 40”—that kind of rapid-fire advice. I think under ten, a listicle can start to feel less like just a listicle and more like a puzzle.

I used to look at my videos like that. I’d pose a question: “How did this creator grow so fast?” And my listicle would be a puzzle, breaking down each step in sequence. People joked about “Paddy’s Four-Step Formula,” “Paddy’s Genius Strategy.” Every video followed a listicle format, but it was a puzzle list—you piece together the full picture. So I’d say, “How did MrBeast grow?” Then I’d break it down: “The first thing he did was this, but without the next thing, it wouldn’t make sense. Next we have this, then that,” piecing the full picture instead of random tips, which feels chaotic and hard to follow.

I really like how the format builds a story out of a list. I also think you can define who the list is for. For example, I love the channel Speed Right Now; he makes videos like “Seven Cars for Cool Nerds,” and that’s where the tension and interest come from. Like “Seven Cars for Cool Nerds Under $25,000”—it’s specific and appealing.

We’ve talked a lot about frameworks and what works on YouTube. The challenge is nothing exists in a vacuum. You want to fit into the world of YouTube—you want to be familiar, unexpected, unique to you. Once you find something that works, it’s common for your category to adopt your visual language. Your thumbnails are a prime example; our thumbnails are similar to so many others in our niche. They might change slight colors, but many thumbnails look exactly like ours now.

[35:00–37:30]

Colin and Samir / Paddy Galloway: In fact, it’s hard for our audience to even identify when a thumbnail is ours because we’re not in the thumbnail ourselves. It’s usually the guest plus a quote or guest name. How do you advise channels to evolve from that point—when you’ve found a format that works, built a brand on it, but now you’re living in a sea of sameness?

That’s a great question—this is a big decision. Sometimes you come up with a format that works so well, but then others copy it, and you almost feel bullied out of the market by thinking you have to change. I’ve spoken to creators who said, “Why did you change the thumbnail format? It was working so well.” They said, “Everyone in my niche started copying me.” But the format still worked. It’s like letting someone with a 10% market share bully you out of your own niche.

I usually advise doubling down rather than changing. I didn’t care how many people copied my thumbnail format—it was crazy. Of course, if I traced it back, the idea came from somewhere else; it wasn’t completely original. But it was my style, and many copied it. I did get triggered sometimes, especially when someone’s scripting was identical to mine, even using the same background music and bridging sentences—like “but next up,” said exactly as I said it! That was ridiculous.

Generally though, I advise people, unless the format is not working, don’t stop. If your format keeps working despite others copying it, keep going. But think about small tweaks in thumbnails to identify them as yours. A lot of people immediately suggest putting a little logo in the bottom left. I’m not a fan of that. It can work, but I don’t like it. People who’ve never seen you will find it ugly or annoying—it breaks up the image and adds busyness.

[37:30–40:00]

Colin and Samir / Paddy Galloway: Thumbnail branding should be subtle—color of text, font, or occasionally even the guest’s t-shirt or color they’re wearing (which is harder to control but maybe you can in the thumbnail edit). Overall, it’s about cutting through the noise. As a creative, it’s hard because the creator brain says, “Look at what’s working and repeat it,” but the creative brain says, “How do I be unique?” Those are sometimes at odds.

It’s frustrating when you lose uniqueness and live in a sea of sameness. But the creator brain says, “If it’s working, just keep doing it.” I remember you guys saying on a podcast years ago that there’s a spectrum of artists and distributors. I think about that a lot—where different people fall. Maybe someone like Casey Neistat is far on the artist side, whereas Jimmy Donaldson (MrBeast) is more towards the distributor side.

I’d say I’m more on the distributor side. I have that creative inclination to always want to be original and fresh, but if we want to build something sustainable, like a business, you have to be more of a distributor. If a band has a record that sells well in a specific genre then switches genres, you might be Kanye with success, or you might be like every other artist who calls that “wild”—a call-out from Paddy!

Kanye’s success switching genres is a big exception—until it’s not. Frank Ocean is another interesting example. For those unfamiliar with the artist-distributor spectrum: the distributor is like a studio exec saying, “Make another Spider-Man because it puts butts in seats.” The artist says, “I’m making what I want, whether people see it or not.” Creators probably have to be about 75% toward distributor for sustainability. I think I live somewhere in the middle, which is challenging. The more you push toward the artist side, you might end up like Emma Chamberlain, who just doesn’t want to play the game anymore.

[40:00–42:30]

Colin and Samir / Paddy Galloway: It’s an interesting middle ground between strategy and creativity. Something I find really helpful, which ties back to an earlier point about building bingeable formats so viewers watch one video, then the next, is a framework I call the 80% rule—not the classic Pareto principle, but a way to diagnose channel problems. It means you should aim to interest at least 80% of your audience in every upload.

That might sound basic, but if you look at a channel doing all these different formats—say, playing multiple video games—and each video appeals to different audiences because very few people play all three games, that leads to fragmentation. Even in a brand channel like Red Bull, they cover skiing, snowboarding, basketball, Formula 1—very few people enjoy all those at once, except maybe the people who work there.

So the 80% rule is: you try to appeal to 80% plus overlap with your audience in every video. BUT only 80% of the time. So you get one in every five videos to try something different and break the rule. That’s where innovation happens. Channels that milk a format too much run into problems when it dries up and have no bridge to go somewhere else.

Strategically, I always favor milking something rather than undermining it. People ask, “What if I milk this too much?” I say, “What if you don’t milk it enough, and everyone else copies you, so you’ve wasted views?” In American football, there’s a saying: “Run it till they stop you.” Run the play until the defense stops it. If it’s working, keep doing it.

For us, the show is our engine—consistent, regular content. At the same time, we schedule goals to do one experimental video a quarter, so we balance the engine with experimentation and see what the future could look like. But here’s a question: when you do an experiment, do you measure it against the success of other videos or treat it in isolation?

[42:30–45:00]

Colin and Samir / Paddy Galloway: That’s a good question. I think this is the biggest problem with YouTube’s ranking system, which people want to get rid of. I still like it personally. As the view maximizer, I love any data. I definitely don’t want to lose it. There’s a quote from a movie executive: “The day I stopped caring about box office numbers is the day I should be out of the business.” I feel that way about the one in ten rank—the day I stop caring about that is the day I should be out.

That’s the game we’re playing. If you don’t care about that game, you’re not really in it. You might have fallen out of love. It’s a painful game, but you have to love it. For us, it’s a little difficult because our experiments are documentary-style, long-form, behind-the-scenes with large creators like Jimmy or Mark Rober. They’re visually designed to be watched on TVs and clicked immediately.

I know a three-hour podcast won’t have that initial velocity. So for us, it’s a bit tougher. Maybe a problem is that if your experiments always work, maybe you should try something that makes you a bit more uncomfortable.

I notice creators often say, “It’s an experiment. We don’t know how it’ll do,” then upload a video that performs an 8 out of 10, and think it’s a disaster. They change the thumbnail, panic, saying their channel’s declining, claiming YouTube’s rigged. It’s like, “Guys, we said this was an experiment.” Part of my job is calming emotional creators, including myself.

I tell them, “We knew this would underperform.” It’s not reassuring, but here’s a little hack: before uploading, get a Google Sheet or notes app and predict where you think it’ll fall out of ten. Use previous data as reference and create an expected outcome.

So when you upload the video, if your note says it’s probably around an 8 out of 10, and it performs around an 8, it’s performing as expected.

[45:00–47:30]

Colin and Samir / Paddy Galloway: It’s not underperforming; it’s just expected. But imagine a business launches a new product line, which is the equivalent of a YouTube video experiment, and compares it against their flagship product. They’d say, “This is performing terribly. Why did we ever do this? This is disastrous.” But if they compare it to how that product performed when it first came out, they might say, “Actually, there’s something here. If it’s a five out of 10, it’s a big hit.” Right? We have to look over such long time windows, but we’re not able to, because a new format is an investment in the future.

I think we’ve also started to value anecdotal feedback, which is really intangible. Like, who reached out after we made that video? Who was in our inbox? Who DM’d us? When we’re out at events, what episodes are people talking about? For example, last year we made an episode about Hot Ones and them going up for sale, with some of our predictions and thoughts on it. It’s not our biggest video ever, but it was the most talked about of the year and created the most conversation. That’s a metric we really value.

Of course, there are classic metrics alongside those, like click-through rate—did people click? Average view duration—did they watch till the end? Did people watch another video? Is there a returning viewer rate that we can connect to that? Those are obviously tracked. But then there’s the anecdotal brand feedback that some creators forget about. We’re building brands, and that metric comes from how the industry, your peers, or the world perceives you. Brand perception is incredibly important whether you’re building a media platform, a personal brand, or now looking at blue-chip, major legacy brands like Red Bull. Views might not be the only thing that matters. The perception of the Red Bull brand also matters.

[47:30–50:00]

Colin and Samir / Paddy Galloway: Sometimes these factors can be at odds. For example, I might be the view maximizer on a 28 million view video, celebrating the view count, ranking, lead over a two-out-of-ten video, and the retention curve holding up well. That’s amazing! But the executive at Red Bull might look at the top comment that says, “Wow, only Red Bull would pull off something this great.” All the comments are like that. The screenshots of comments on that video are a great case study of why brands should do YouTube: viewers don’t just see that as Max Verstappen in the drone-formed car; they see it as Red Bull, as if the brand did this for them. That’s much more valuable than 28 million ad impressions. It’s people living with your brand and your content.

What you’ve described is really important, but the difficult thing is that it’s so hard for people to measure. You’re saying you go to events, and it’s just a feeling, with no corporate KPI against it.

Yes, it’s very hard to measure objectively. You have to be careful not to let that anecdotal feedback sway you too much. You could just have one person say, “I loved it.” When we first started on YouTube, anyone who said they loved a video, we’d want to make another just like it immediately. For example, when I worked with a quite large Minecraft channel, we had a Discord server with maybe a couple hundred thousand fans. We had a channel for “contribute video ideas” where people could share ideas. It would get 50 or 60 ideas a day—hundreds per week—but I don’t believe we ever made a single video from that list.

That wasn’t to dismiss audience feedback, but it was nearly always “do this again,” which isn’t the strongest signal.

[50:00–52:30]

Colin and Samir / Paddy Galloway: One interesting thing on this: if there’s a YouTube employee listening, I’ve said this before. I would love a feature showing viewer satisfaction. We know YouTube measures clicks and watch time, but satisfaction is about how satisfied viewers are. It’s hard to measure. You can look at dislike ratios or comment sentiment, but imagine YouTube providing a satisfaction score for a video—that would be really interesting. On Twitter, I measure satisfaction by bookmark counts. It’s imperfect, but say a tweet gets 500,000 views with 100 bookmarks, and another gets 100,000 views with 3,000 bookmarks. I use bookmarks as a signal of satisfaction.

The YouTube equivalent is harder. You could look at shares or likes, but I wish there was something in YouTube Studio that showed a video’s satisfaction score, maybe 78% or so. That would be amazing.

Regarding the evolution of YouTube and media, you mentioned the Red Bull video where comments described it as a gift from Red Bull to fans, essentially making the equivalent of a TV show. The Red Bull channel is like Red Bull TV. I don’t think I anticipated that when we started YouTube. I kind of expected individuals to become the modern media platform, which has played out. Individuals are more trusted as media sources than big corporations like NBC or CNN. Brands stepping in to become their own media platforms is interesting, but it’s still early days, with Red Bull probably leading the pack.

This conversation is incredibly niche. Some of the terminology we’re using would be hard for a typical marketing department person at a brand to understand. But I truly believe that in five to ten years, these brands will have experts or people well-versed in this.

Is Nike going to make their own show on YouTube? McDonald’s? What does the future of brands look like?

How do creators and brands differ on YouTube? You have a front-row seat to how brands treat the platform. If we play this out, are brands the next big studios?

[52:30–55:00]

Colin and Samir / Paddy Galloway: I think the biggest difference between creators and brands is that most creators want to grow their audience. Not always, but especially those coming to me—they want to grow their viewership. We have a strong internal stat showing that the first 12 months after we start working with a channel, long-form viewership grows around 350 to 400 percent year-over-year compared to before. For big established channels, that’s a huge difference.

Creators want more views. They want a “view maximizer” to give them views, right? Brands want views too, but they want to be in front of the right viewers. It’s not about views for the sake of views. They also don’t want anything that puts their brand at risk or in a bad light.

For a traditional YouTube strategist like me, the first ideas when working with a brand like Red Bull are often “Let’s race an F1 car versus Neymar,” or “Let’s do huge ambitious ideas.” Some would get views, but that’s not what the brand cares about. They don’t care about views alone; they care about connection. They want people to see the brand in connection with good content and feel the brand brought that experience to the audience.

Brands optimize for so much more than views alone, which actually sometimes makes it harder. That was one of the first things I learned working with Red Bull, the first brand we worked with. We also work with the Philadelphia Eagles, the football team and Super Bowl champions, and a big car manufacturer—one of the biggest in the world—along with other brands. Each has their own priorities. Some want to showcase a side of their business or use the channel as a recruitment driver to attract people to work with them. Every brand is different. That’s the biggest difference: they optimize for so much more than just views.

Do you ever have a brand bring a product launch video and say, “Put this out on the channel”? Brand YouTube channels can be frustrating—they’re often just dumping grounds for corporate videos. They treat the channel like a hosting solution, like Vimeo. “Here’s a place to put videos to embed on the website.”

[55:00–57:30]

Colin and Samir / Paddy Galloway: Look at any big company—sometimes companies you’d expect to be better at this. I was even looking at a huge cybersecurity company recently, with a $50 billion valuation. Their channel was full of CEO letters, product launches, and updates. Just corporate videos. That is not a winning YouTube strategy. With titles, thumbnails, and strategy like that—they’re basically telling YouTube, “Don’t bother showing my videos.”

Honestly, sometimes a title like “Video 1” with a mysterious thumbnail would perform better than those boring corporate videos. And it’s true—so many brands have strong Instagram or TikTok programming, well-funded and well-thought-out, but then their YouTube channel looks like tumbleweeds—just odd remnants of corporate uploads.

I think the reason is that YouTube hasn’t been commercialized as much in the B2B space. Brands tend to hire big agencies that specialize in social media, marketing, etc., and while those agencies are good at Instagram and Facebook—and some at TikTok—most don’t have strong in-house YouTube expertise. Some do, but most don’t. You can’t really consider YouTube in the same conversation as Instagram and TikTok. To do YouTube right, the first step is to have a YouTube strategist—a writer who can create formats that make sense for both the brand and the channel.

I think about Shopify a lot. Shopify is a very present brand on YouTube but still does a lot of corporate uploads and tutorials. But you could imagine a recurring format like “Starting a Million-Dollar Business in 24 Hours.” That could be a recurring show on their channel that a lot of people would watch. There’s a creator called Starter Story who makes videos about entrepreneurs and their businesses: “How this guy started a business in his living room,” “How this guy makes $3 million a year from faceless YouTube channels.” Shopify could be making all those videos; they have the database and contacts. They just need a format, title, and thumbnail—they could be driving tons of views.

[57:30–1:00:00]

Colin and Samir / Paddy Galloway: The same applies to car companies. You’re working with one, but it’s amazing how many major car channels just have corporate uploads, press releases, and car tutorials. Meanwhile, there is an unbelievable ecosystem of car videos on YouTube that don’t rely on big names. The car and the journey are the stars of the title and thumbnail.

Cars are the second biggest purchase decision people make after a house. The average car price in America is around $25,000 to $40,000. When people buy a car, research shows YouTube is their go-to platform more than ads, magazines, or newspapers.

We’re not just selling fidget spinners here; we’re selling cars worth $30,000. That’s why creators like Doug DeMuro have such successful businesses.

Earlier, we talked about competitive advantages. For these big brands, the advantage is access to new products before anyone else. Why aren’t they creating the first reveal video themselves? Not to take views away from creators—those creators can benefit—but brands themselves should be first.

If we step back and look at brands as content producers, Apple is a great example. When I first bought an iPod or Mac, I wouldn’t have thought Apple would make a show like Severance. Severance is one of the greatest TV shows, yet it’s funded by a company not traditionally an entertainment company. Amazon Prime Video is another example—content production rooted in a different type of business. I think this will play out on YouTube too: brands have the funds and could engage their audiences better if they made shows.

The misguided understanding is that YouTube is just a place to upload videos. But if you think of your YouTube channel as a show, that feels very different. That third rule we talk about, “Do you want more stuff like this?” is important. If something hits, respect that audience expectation—this is a show.

For example, Amelia Dimoldenberg’s channel is Chicken Shop Date. The network model of a channel as a collection of different things isn’t as effective as it used to be. There was a time on YouTube when that worked, like BuzzFeed uploading 10 different shows that all somewhat hit, but I don’t think that works anymore.

[1:00:00–1:02:30]

Colin and Samir / Paddy Galloway: Worth It, right? That was a format. The Try Guys, all those shows had to spin off to their own channels because they couldn’t live in this environment anymore. And I think brands should look at that and go, “Wait, we can’t upload a ton of different things. We’re actually just looking to make one show, a hit show.”

Yeah. And a show that will compete with other shows in the genre. Not just a hit show for hit show’s sake, but a show that will be directly pegged and placed next to all your competitors.

Now, I think this is a really interesting time because independent creators—there are plenty of amazing creators who understand YouTube and the internet now—but I think within that subset, many don’t want to handle the advertising business. Meaning, the independent advertising business of selling brand sponsorships themselves, managing their own sponsorships. But if they got hired as a show creator for a brand they’re interested in, things change.

For example, if you’re a cooking creator and all of a sudden Le Creuset comes to you and says, “We love what you’re doing. Can we acquire you into this and have you make this cooking show, but through the context of Le Creuset?” That’s really interesting.

Especially if creators have hit a point with their channels where they want a new challenge, maybe they’re a bit burnt out and doing a lot on their own. A big brand could say, “Hey, come develop this show internally with us. We’ll give you everything. You don’t have to do all the editing or everything yourself.” I could see that.

And if you think about a brand like Target, which has a YouTube channel, we talked about this a bit before recording. I wanted to look at it—is it good? It’s not good. No, it’s not good. And Target is a massive brand, so you think about how Target doesn’t have a Supermarket Sweep show. How did they not do the thumbnails right there? The “Whatever you can put in the cart, you keep”—that’s such a clean format, very easy.

[1:02:30–1:05:00]

Colin and Samir / Paddy Galloway: They have tons of creators who have products in Target integrated into the episodes. Have you seen a channel called The Deal Guy? No? He does a monthly roundup of Costco deals—what’s a great deal this month, that kind of thing. That’s so good. Why doesn’t a shopping brand do that?

I’m going to tell you the most recent upload to the Target YouTube channel. The title is too long to fit, so let me open the video. It’s titled “Target Accelerators Presents: Retail Fundamentals—Introduction to Mass Retail.” It has 634 views in 9 days. And the thumbnail looks like a Zoom call. Whoa. Look at that. This is why I said I didn’t want to see it. It’s such a massive missed opportunity given Target’s access and how commonplace Target is across the U.S., already accepted and comfortable. It’s an amazing set for a show.

I mean, the video itself—whatever this “Target Accelerators Presents” thing is—doesn’t need to live here, but put it on Vimeo or somewhere else because clearly no one is waiting for it. Are they just making videos for their own senior employees to watch?

There’s a question of brand risk with these brands, and to me, this is riskier than what we’re talking about. What was Jimmy’s format? Something like “Anything you can put in the cart, I’ll pay for.” If Target repeated that format with celebrities and regular people, it would be fascinating. You show up and say, “Here’s a Target cart. Anything you can fit into the cart in 30 seconds—you keep it.” People would choose interesting things—I would watch that all the time. You’d get short-form content out of that.

If you think about your channel as a TV show, it can change the framework in people’s minds. You’d ask, “Why would we upload that Zoom call to a TV show? That’s crazy.” What you just said there will resonate a lot with brands like that—just change the question to: would you do this if it was like a TV show?

[1:05:00–1:07:30]

Colin and Samir / Paddy Galloway: I would love to sit down with brands in this context because brands have recognition, funding, and many have sets—like Target, which has a set and production teams. The people on those teams, I imagine, are pushing for exactly what we’re saying. They’re probably like, “Guys, and,” like you said, “brand risk is a thing, but it could go really well or go wrong.” I understand the risk, but…

We just started this podcast talking about how YouTube is Hollywood—streaming, podcasts—it is the platform. In three or four years, consumers will look at brands on YouTube and ask, “What are they doing there?” If you look at Target and that ridiculously long accelerator title… It’s embarrassing to represent such a big, impressive brand with that content.

But I wonder whether this will naturally play out with brands picking up creators. It could happen. If you search “Target haul,” there are so many videos of “self-care hauls at Target” from the last year with 2.8, 3, 4, even 5 million views. How is it that nobody does a quick audit of this? Or in your experience, is that what we’re seeing? Is it a deprioritization of YouTube, with Target thinking: “Well, there are Target hauls all over YouTube. We’re essentially already present, so why have our own show?”

I think it’s maybe a lack of understanding YouTube discoverability. If they did a Target haul show with celebrities, it’s not outrageous to say they could reach 10 million viewers an episode. The danger is they might overproduce it.

This raises a question I want to ask both of you: how do you keep it authentic? Because even if you bring a great creator onto a brand channel, you can tell when there are bigger forces at play that make it feel inauthentic. That’s a huge risk if you’re going to have a brand YouTube channel.

Yeah, it’s true. They need to have that creator in the room. They need to have people like us in the room who can direct and have actual ownership. In my experience, and I consider myself very lucky because I work with the Red Bull team—and their YouTube team is phenomenal—before I came in, they were already doing decent content, and we helped skyrocket it. A lot of the success is down to the talent of individual team members and even the higher executives who are really open to content and understand its importance.

[1:07:30–1:10:00]

Colin and Samir / Paddy Galloway: We also work with the Eagles. The person I directly report to at the Eagles watches YouTube and sees how valuable it is. But the problem is that if you bring in a creator to make a show format, senior marketing people—who are great at traditional marketing but may not understand YouTube—might start pulling it in their direction. They might say, “No, this doesn’t look polished enough,” or, “We need to do this, this, and that,” and it ends up looking corporate.

A bit of a tangent, but an example is the Ronaldo channel. When it launched, I was excited—Ronaldo is the most famous athlete in history, and the channel has done well, but I watched the content and thought, “Wow, they broke all the rules we talk about.” This is how people who have never actually consumed YouTube content imagine YouTube is: funny, weird edits; laughing soundtracks. It feels like a parody or an SNL skit of YouTube.

There are also bizarre videos, like the iPhone clips of Ronaldo playing tennis with his kids. It’s a 12-second clip that repeats, with various flashy transitions, and yet it has 60 million views. That’s a unicorn. He’s a unique case.

Celebrity channels are at heavy risk of overproduction. The excitement of YouTube content is often the intimacy and access—that’s why people tune in. When you see something like Chris Hemsworth at a gym, you’ve seen it a million times. Unless he says something exclusive or there’s something exceptionally interesting, it gets old.

To explore this, the three questions we try to ask anyone seeking YouTube or product advice are: Who is this for? Why would they watch? And is it unique to you? These three simple questions are critical.

The second question—why would they watch—gets overlooked a lot. The assumption is “because it looks pretty.” With celebrity channels specifically, the assumption is “They’ll watch because I’m a celebrity,” which is true to an extent, but if your concept, title, and thumbnails are not done right, you won’t reach new audiences.

[1:10:00–1:12:30]

Colin and Samir / Paddy Galloway: Many celebrities do vlogs like “24 hours with me in Miami.” That’s fine for their core fan base, but if you want to broaden your empire and improve distribution, concept vlogs work better—not just a vlog, but vlogs with a concept behind them, like “Day in the Life of an NFL Player.” That’s a clear concept, which is something we helped the Eagles do.

The Eagles released a video about a year ago we helped package. It was “Seven days: An NFL player’s life” with Lane Johnson, one of their star players. If you titled it more specifically to Lane Johnson or the Eagles, it probably wouldn’t have performed as well as it did.

Is Lane Johnson’s name in the title? I don’t believe it is—at least not at the start. I think it’s titled with “NFL player” to give it broader appeal so it’s not just for Lane Johnson fans.

It’s probably hard to wrap your head around, especially if you’re at the Eagles and think, “He’s Lane Johnson. Why are you calling him ‘NFL player’?” But I do that a lot with the Eagles: unless it’s Saquon Barkley or Jaylen Reagor, I call it “NFL player.”

Same with Red Bull: they have athletes like Max Verstappen and Neymar. These Red Bull athletes are incredible in their fields, but do they have broad audience recognition? I think of them as zeitgeist names—people recognize the name and general context but not more detail. For example, people see Max Verstappen and think, “Okay, I know that guy drives cars fast.” So if they see a video of him driving against a drone, it makes sense.

But many people overestimate how important or interested people are in individual names. I see this frequently even with business channels. For example, a podcast called Diary of a CEO could have a big guest, but titles might say “the money expert” or “the health expert” instead of the name.

It’s weird to decide whether to use a guest’s name or a description. Like we had Jacob Collier, a multi-Grammy-winning musician, on our show. We titled it “Interview with the Mozart of Gen Z.” His name is in the thumbnail, but that descriptor helped the episode find much more scale. It’s one of my favorite episodes, but if it was titled just “Jacob Collier,” I’m not sure it would have reached beyond his audience.

[1:12:30–1:15:00]

Colin and Samir / Paddy Galloway: This episode will probably be the same. If you title the episode with my name leading, it might do well with your core audience—some podcasts with my name leading have 100,000 or 200,000 views—but if you want a bigger view count, you’ll probably have to call me something else or describe me differently. I wouldn’t take offense to that.

The sensitivity extends to the Eagles’ use of Lane Johnson’s name; he might feel, “Why put my name in the title? What’s that about?” I imagine you have to have honest conversations about title and packaging with the brand.

The takeaway is that whether you’re a brand or creator trying to improve, writing titles daily is probably the most important thing you can do. Writing lots of titles for a video helps you develop formats you can pull from.

I want to tell creators to write 30 titles for your video. They say, “Paddy, that’s overwhelming.” I think people just experience things differently. Writing 30 titles and thumbnail concepts together can take 10 minutes or less. It doesn’t mean all have to be great—it’s about putting things together, trying different words, seeing what looks interesting, and studying what others do to try to adapt.

For many clients we work with, we sit down and write 30 or 40 titles for a video, and that doesn’t take long. Five of them might be slight alterations—a one-word difference or so. It’s not like 30 totally different ideas in a row. You write one, then alter it repeatedly. If 29 of them are bad, that’s fine because you start to learn what a bad idea looks like, which is also important.

One thing I’d say about brands is that sometimes brands seem unsure how to let creators know they’re open to collaboration. I’ve heard this concern from creators who say some brands are so protective that you can’t get access—for example, some sports franchises just say no. But with the Eagles, if you’re a large creator and have a cool idea...

[1:15:00–1:17:30]

Colin and Samir / Paddy Galloway: That involves, like, an NFL team—they can give you some access or something—they’re really open to being pitched on that sort of stuff. And the same with Red Bull: if you’re a creator with a pretty decent audience and a cool idea involving Red Bull, they’re pretty open. So the brands that are already doing YouTube—they almost want to say, “Guys, tell us ideas you want to make with us. We want to be part of this conversation and ecosystem.”

I think you need social proof first. So the Eagles have to do something with a creator; they have to go outbound first—they actually have to pitch a creator an idea, do that, and then use that as the top of funnel. Because, as creators or anyone in business, social proof is so important. You’ve got to ask: has anyone done it before?

For brands, it can be overwhelming because there are so many creators. Curation is often what they need most when working with a creator—someone who can say, “Hey, this is actually a vetted creator. They’ve been in market for a while. They have an audience fit. They’ve worked with these brands before. This will be a great fit for you.” This kind of creator discovery is something a lot of brands come to us with, and it’s something we do a lot. Just: who should I even consider? That’s a really important process—what does that look and feel like?

Back to repeatable formats: Target has that Supermarket Sweep format, where the ask is way clearer. The ask of “pitch us anything” feels overwhelming—it puts a lot of onus on the creator. But if the Eagles said, “Hey, we have this format where you answer five questions—will you come do it?”—it creates aspiration too. Now I want to be on the Eagles’ show or Target’s show.

[1:17:30–1:20:00]

Colin and Samir / Paddy Galloway: Kane (Kai) Cenat, actually, if we take a step back, has created some of the most easy-to-repeat formats on YouTube—like “10 Things You Can’t Live Without” or Architectural Digest, or the 72 or 73 Question Challenge. (Is it 72 or 73? Everyone’s saying 72, but let’s not look it up—let’s just say 73.)

All of those stem from one guy, Kai Cenat, who came up with a lot of these awesome formats. When you have that format, like Colin said, it creates aspiration—if I ended up on “10 Things I Can’t Live Without” or the GQ one, I’d be like, “Oh my god, we kind of made it.” Like the Wired Autocomplete, too.

So look at what Kai Cenat did and think about it in the context of your brand. Can you create one of those formats? Now you can invite creators to collaborate—and that’s way easier than just saying, “We’re the Eagles, do something with us.” If you have a product launch or campaign, you can integrate it into your successful show. That’s powerful, and you have full control.

I think we will see this trend. It will require a lot of handholding because it’s terrifying for a brand to make a show. But I absolutely believe it is the future.

I also want to talk about packaging. I’m curious how much you spend on the first 30 seconds of videos with your clients.

Quite a lot. The biggest levers to multiply growth are the title, the thumbnail, and the idea. Rarely does a better intro alone lead to 270 times more views, but even so, when I break down a video, I think about where to allocate heavy time. For a 10-minute video, you might conventionally spend about 10% of your time on each minute. But for our clients, the first minute might get 20 or 30% of the attention—frontloading the video with the best value is key.

[1:20:00–1:22:30]

Colin and Samir / Paddy Galloway: One thing I learned working with Jimmy (MrBeast) four or five years ago: when the lead editor and I brought him an edit, if the first 30 seconds was strong, he would almost always find the rest of the content great. If something was off there, he’d say, “No, the whole thing’s off.” I wondered why, but Jimmy’s brain is coded to be a viewer. If the video starts on the wrong foot, the viewer anchors the video badly and forms a negative impression early, giving less leeway as the video progresses.

I think about intros like this: my formula is to immediately deliver on the promise. If you make a promise in your title, thumbnail, or intro, can you deliver visually or verbally? The goal is to make your viewer feel like they made the right decision and not stupid for clicking. Make them feel validated.

You also want the necessary context—not too much. Some creators overload the intro with context. What’s the necessary context? What intriguing parts of the story or elements can you tease? Then flow seamlessly into the first storyline or action point without a big gap. I like intros that flow naturally so you can’t even pinpoint where they start or end. Others have different methods.

We have a slightly different framework. First, confirm the click—you clicked, so the video must match the thumbnail. The first seven seconds establish context and lay the foundation. By 30 seconds, we want to introduce a new hook—something unexpected from the thumbnail that makes you want to stay until the end. We also make a promise that if you stay, you’ll get the payoff.

Another successful intro format is multiple questions followed by an answer promise. For example, about a megalodon: “The megalodon was the fiercest ocean predator—five times the size of a great white shark. It killed everything it saw, yet somehow it went extinct. How could this shark go extinct? Is there a mysterious reason behind its disappearance? In this video, we’re going to dive into that.”

[1:22:30–1:25:00]

Colin and Samir / Paddy Galloway: That approach reminds me of your old videos—the way you talk and post questions. Which begs the question, why don’t you just make a faceless channel about that style with a massive audience?

The answer is: I have. I’ve had a lot of faceless channels over the years. People think of me as just the Paddy Galloway channel, but I manage several other successful, faceless channels behind the scenes. Some are in music genres that I’ve talked about here before.

I love working with creators because I’m not that talented in front of the camera. You might disagree, but I don’t think I’m very good at it. Early in my career, I realized I’m good at certain things, but a Minecraft creator making videos can get 20 or 30 million views if done right. So if I combine my knowledge and expertise with someone who has talent, ability, and the competitive advantage I lack—for example, I’m not a skilled Minecraft player, but someone who is the world’s best builder or PVP player has that edge—then I can build something bigger than what I can alone.

As I continue to build my company and team, I think we’ll invest more in original content. Even with creators we work with now, I’m thinking about how to have more ownership of content—making them growth partners, not just consultants.

Do you consult on short-form too?

Yeah. What’s your position on short-form? There’s this interesting world now where YouTube is often watched on TVs. Some content lives in the 22-30 minute range—Ryan Trahan’s channel is often 30+ minutes, Jimmy’s also often 30-plus, Michelle Khare puts out hour-long videos. On the other end, there’s super short-form.

Red Bull is in the middle. We crush it with short-form there. But classically, I’m a long-form guy. Long-form is what I made my living from, especially being a full-time YouTuber from age 14 to about 22 or 23. I feel like I’m best at that. People who’ve emerged in the last three years might be better at short-form.

[1:25:00–1:27:30]

Colin and Samir / Paddy Galloway: We advise brands on short-form, do ideation for some short-form content. It’s actually fun to brainstorm ideas. We have elimination criteria: is an idea a short-form idea? Maybe it’s better suited for 10 or 20-minute videos, maybe it really lives in a 20-30 second short. We do some of that work with clients but don’t lead with short-form.

Shorts are amazing. I know some people are anti-shorts or think they’re bad, but I think they’re cool. There’s also funny short-form inflation with view counts: for example, we talked about 10 billion views a year. To get to 100 billion views, you’d just try to sign every massive short. But views can be easy; it’s about brand, impact, and engagement. You don’t want views just for views’ sake. The goal is real engagement—people remembering your brand.

Now, more factors come in as YouTube evolves, like creators who are most likely “viewmaxing”—looking at Paddy thinking, “How do I Vmax?” As brands and celebrities join, one person we talked about is Timothée Chalamet. His YouTube presence is interesting because he’s a movie star.

Early in my career, Colin and I worked on Jeremy Lin’s YouTube channel. You know who Jeremy Lin is—a basketball player who was the first NBA player to be very human and relatable. During his “Linsanity” run in Madison Square Garden, he wasn’t a starter but performed unbelievably for several games. After that, he launched a YouTube channel with sketches and very authentic, raw content. He was truly the first athlete to say, “I’m a YouTuber.”

While working with Jeremy behind the scenes, I realized with athletes there’s a difference between humanizing them and making them essentially untouchable. Michael Jordan during his heyday was a superhero figure. You wouldn’t want a lot of Michael Jordan on YouTube—he was inaccessible, and that added to his mystique. I wouldn’t advise someone like Michael Jordan to have a YouTube channel. Then you have Jeremy Lin—the opposite, humanized and accessible.

[1:27:30–1:30:00]

Colin and Samir / Paddy Galloway: That leads me to Timothée Chalamet. He actually started on YouTube modifying Xbox controllers. Now, his modern-day press circuit is largely on YouTube—that’s how entertainment operates today. I wonder if someone like him could upload less often but still maintain a premium brand and YouTube channel.

Movie stars’ lives are very project-focused—months on a project, then space between projects. Timothée talked about working nonstop on the set of the Bob Dylan movie—every hour fully engaged. Shooting content or being followed by a camera during that intense period might be challenging. But in the downtime, especially since he’s of a similar age to me and probably grew up with YouTube, he likely has a passion for it. He has experience from the Xbox stuff and Call of Duty trickshotting, which roots him in that culture.

If we were advising Timothée, we’d say: what unique, interesting aspects of your life can you show? Probably a lot. Behind the scenes at the Oscars, a recap that’s more conceptual than a typical vlog—which sometimes fails but a concept vlog about exclusive Oscar-night access could be compelling.

This also relates back to the NFL player example: people want to know what it’s like to be that person, not just the sport itself. The appeal of NFL day-in-the-life videos isn’t always the NFL action but how an NFL player lives—especially aspirational for fans. What’s their lifestyle like?

So, for Timothée, what about the day-in-the-life on the set of Dune 3 or similar? We always used to ask athletes: if you weren’t being paid and couldn’t talk about your sport, what would you want to talk about?

[1:30:00–1:32:11]

Colin and Samir / Paddy Galloway: Be passionate enough to talk about something even if you didn’t get paid for the rest of your life, and start there. Like, if it is your sport, fine—you can retire and still make videos about your sport forever. But is there something that you’d be interested in that’s not your main field? I think with Timothée Chalamet, I would want to ask him, instead of covering your life and giving constant access, which could make you accessible but might cause burnout, is there anything you are passionate about, something you’re a community member of that you would want to contribute to? That’s a really good idea.

That’s a good idea—if you took down a celebrity and asked those questions. But then again, people are so multifaceted that they might say, “Oh, this, this, and this,” and before you know it, it’s too much to cover. And the people on the other side might say, “Yeah, whatever you want. Cool. Let’s do all that.” I think with Timothée Chalamet, if he wanted to do this, I would be very curious about his fashion choices. I would be very curious to watch how he thinks about that. Or if he doesn’t think about it and a stylist does it, that’s fine. But even what he wore to the Oscars was unique and interesting; he was expressing himself in a very interesting way. Or, as a Knicks fan, do you want to do Knicks commentary? That would be super interesting, right? Like, how interesting would it be if you had to watch not because you’re a Timothée Chalamet fan, but because you’re a Knicks fan? That would make him such a multifaceted person—he already is, but this would enhance it.

Yeah, but you also have to consider accessibility. Does it make sense to be accessible? Maybe it doesn’t work, but you go to another movie star who might want to be accessible, and you say, “Alright, maybe there is something here.” I think it’s interesting how this ties into the seasons of a career. Some movie stars are timeless—like De Niro or Al Pacino, for example—but others have a peak where they make all the big films, then they want to take it slower.

[1:32:11–1:34:21]

Colin and Samir / Paddy Galloway: With athletes, there’s also a cutoff point. Like if you’re an NFL player and you’re 35, realistically you think, “Okay, after this, I can either go into coaching, punditry, or live off my savings and do whatever.” But maybe another avenue could be content creation. You already have a base—people like you for a reason—so can you just pivot? For example, I saw Jason Kelce do a video talking about his custom car. That was a good video, just him talking about his car.

What we try to do with athletes—and I try to do with everyone who pitches me a YouTube channel or format—is always think about a 52-week window. Can you make this every week for 52 weeks? Because sometimes we also worked with Giannis Antetokounmpo—I want to make sure I say his name correctly—some videos with him and Jesser. Every time I try to say his name or the video title.

But one of the videos with Giannis did incredibly well. I’m really impressed with him now, and the way he shows up in Jesser’s videos is fantastic. The format of “Guess the NBA Player” is unbelievable. However, in his rookie year, he wasn’t very keen on doing the YouTube channel. I think he wanted to do it but didn’t have the time or space. It was overproduced—too many people on set. On the first day, I was looking around and thought, “If we want to do this every week for 52 weeks, this is going to be super expensive and unsustainable.” It was a massive production each time. So you try to reduce it down.

Look at someone like Ryan Trahan filming with his iPhone. You’re like, how can we get this into the simplest form? Marques Brownlee’s Autofocus channel is perfect YouTube, in my opinion. From a production perspective, he’s holding his iPhone, films with his car, cuts very minimally—like two cuts. He just rattles it off and uploads. He has a thumbnail format for it. To me, that is perfect YouTube.

[1:34:21–1:36:32]

Colin and Samir / Paddy Galloway: I love that channel. Have you seen the new intro where they start in a bush or something and creep out? Yeah. It’s intimidating for an athlete to be like, “Title, thumbnail, intro, scripting, intriguing language, statement plus intrigue. Okay, ask questions...” It’s a lot. But just like, “Hey, what’s something you’re passionate about? Can you film with an iPhone? Can you do it simply?” I think that makes a lot of sense.

One more brand channel I want to pitch: if an airline—like Delta, or maybe a more international one—partnered with a creator like Drew Binsky and essentially just traveled to the destinations, doing simple formats. If it’s a budget airline, visiting Singapore on a dollar—like, what can a dollar get you in Singapore?—and using the airline to fly there. Or if it’s a luxury airline, doing $25,000 hotel rooms in Dubai for Emirates. I think you can build out the world like that. Airlines have a really great opportunity to create YouTube shows.

You just made me think: a great way for a brand to realize if there’s potential is to see if creators are already making content about this thing. Thinking of staples of viral YouTube content—like airline seats, whether budget ones or the Casey Neistat Emirates one from years ago with 60 million views—or things cars.

Car brands, too—you think about what’s working, then ask, “What if we sponsor this? What if we own this?” That’s really interesting. I could totally see airlines doing this. Then they can play it on the plane.

Dude, we have to make this an annual thing. I think we have to keep updated because there’s so much to talk about and explore. Also, just note where the industry and where YouTube are. It’d be really fun to make it annual and ask, “Where are we in 2026? Did more brands join? Is the ‘meta’ different, or are there new metas that have emerged?” It’s a really fun conversation.

Yeah, the YouTube roundtable. I love it. All right, thanks, Paddy.

Thanks. You got it. Pleasure.

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