Chapter Timestamps
00:00 - The Great Device Shift: YouTube’s Rise on TV
04:20 - Case Study: Red Bull’s Everest Ski Video
07:00 - Viewer Behavior: TV vs. Mobile
10:11 - Navigating the New Homepage Layout
14:10 - The Shift from Formats to Shows
15:32 - Views vs. Returning Viewers
20:01 - Rethinking Success Metrics on YouTube
23:30 - The Future of Public View Counts
27:15 - The Risk of Format “Milking”
31:11 - Authenticity and Personal Connection
33:51 - Turning a Format into a Branded Show
38:03 - Syndication: YouTubers on Streaming Platforms
40:21 - Will YouTube TV Look Like Netflix?
43:56 - Current Frameworks: The “Every” Format
48:50 - Thumbnail Psychology and Engagement
53:52 - The Role of AI in Creative Workflows
56:30 - Maintaining Human Moats in an AI Era
01:00:20 - Long-form vs. Short-form Systems
01:02:45 - The Importance of Curation and Taste
01:04:57 - Closing Thoughts and Future Outlook
Made with: The Transcript Desk Chrome Extension
Full video:
Today we’re joined for the second time by YouTube strategist Paddy Galloway to discuss what works on YouTube in 2026, 2027 and beyond.
Transcript
00:02-02:23
Colin: Today’s guest is Paddy Galloway. He’s one of the most sought-after YouTube strategists in the world—and that’s largely because of the work he’s done, generating over 10 billion views with clients like Red Bull, Jester, and the Philadelphia Eagles.
Colin: We wanted to bring Paddy back on the show because YouTube is going through one of the most significant shifts in its history. More people are watching YouTube on their connected TVs than any other platform.
Samir: And this shift is having major impacts on creators. It’s changing what gets seen and what doesn’t.
Colin: Now, the great thing about Paddy is that he’s in the weeds day-to-day across multiple YouTube channels. So, he’s brought forward frameworks, real case studies, and real videos that are working in this new era of YouTube.
Colin: If you’ve never listened to an episode with Paddy Galloway, you’re in for a treat because his accent is fantastic.
Samir: Just delightful.
Colin: I could listen to him talk about anything.
Samir: All right. Now, for our episode with YouTube strategist Paddy Galloway.
Colin: All right, Paddy. Welcome back.
Paddy: Thank you. Back by popular demand.
Colin: Exactly.
[Laughter]
Colin: So, you’ve brought some graphs.
Paddy: I did.
Colin: Let’s talk about this first one. It’s titled The Great Device Shift. What are we looking at right now?
Paddy: It’s a very common talking point these days—how YouTube is going to TV. But my team and I wanted to dig into what the data actually shows about how drastic this shift has been. This is a really interesting graph where we looked at some of our biggest clients—millions of views worth of data. And we noticed this crazy shift around 2023, where for the first time, TV started to lead as the biggest device type for their viewership.
Paddy: If you look back to 2021 and compare it to now, it’s almost hard to imagine how quickly viewer behavior has changed. To go from, what, 23-24% in 2021 to now over 50% of our clients’ viewership is pretty wild.
Samir: Yeah, most creators we talk to now say somewhere between 40 and 50% of their viewership comes from television. This is a major talking point for YouTube because it really helps attract advertisers. There’s still a lot of money spent on TV advertising, so YouTube’s pushing the narrative: “Hey, look—people are watching on TV.”
Colin: Has this been led by a change that creators made, or is this led by a change that YouTube made?
Paddy: I think it’s a few things at once. Two or three years ago, people started realizing that long videos were performing better. And you start to see the shift. We can actually look at one of the graphs I have here—the average length of a long-form video. This is from 100 billion views worth of data, and we can see the mean and median increasing. It’s up 51% since 2020.
02:53-05:12
Paddy: Creators in 2020 were making 12-, 15-, 16-minute videos on average. Today, in 2025 and 2026, they’re topping out at 20 minutes or more quite frequently. That’s been a big factor in the device type shift because of longer videos.
Colin: When was the advent of mid-rolls?
Paddy: That was a long time ago.
Samir: Yeah, that was a long time ago.
Colin: I don’t remember—I guess we never made long enough videos to have mid-rolls.
Samir: There was a time when you had to be longer than, what, 7 or 10 minutes or something like that?
Paddy: Yeah.
Samir: I wonder if this is just by nature of creators getting more sophisticated—better at storytelling and production—so naturally, you’re going to make longer videos. Or if it was a mixture of different incentive structures.
Samir: For us, it wasn’t so intentional to make longer videos. It just was the format. We were making a podcast, so it was inherently longer.
Paddy: I think you can’t overlook the fact that the YouTube app is and has always been free. And the moment it ended up on TVs—and it was recognizable, and people had a relationship with it—they were going to watch on their TVs. The longer the content gets, the better it performs, the more ads that play, the more monetization opportunities for creators. They could invest back into their content, continue to make higher-quality, longer-form videos that then get watched again on bigger screens. It felt like this perfect storm that led to where we are right now.
Colin: So, can you show us an example of a long video that has worked for one of your clients?
Paddy: Yeah, I’ve got a great one right here. This is a video that Red Bull posted a few months ago. They’re one of our clients. It’s called I Skied Down Mount Everest—World First, No Oxygen.
Paddy: Let’s get the elephant out of the room—the concept itself is amazing, so that obviously helped this video travel as far as it did. It’s got over 30 million views. It was one of the most viewed videos of Q4.
Paddy: But I thought it was interesting because, from my experience in YouTube strategy, five years ago, this would have been a 10-minute video. We would have made it 10 minutes—maybe even shorter, 5-10 minutes. And now, in 2025, because of these trends we’re talking about—because of the TV device type taking over—it became a 31-minute video with not too many cuts, not a really fast-paced edit. It doesn’t even have narration. It’s a 31-minute video made for TV.
Paddy: A few years ago, everyone was complaining about retention editing and how YouTube was becoming too fast-paced. And here we are a few years later, and one of the most viewed videos recently is 31 minutes of unstructured footage.
05:26-07:46
Samir: This was a refreshing video for that reason. I’ll be honest—I looked at this thumbnail for weeks. I’m a skier, and I didn’t click on it. Then, finally, someone told me about a week ago that it’s not edited like a normal YouTube video. They said, “It’s not stereotypically what you’d expect. It moves way slower. There’s a little bit of text, but then it just lets the scene unfold.” And I was like, “Okay, I’ll check it out.”
Samir: I think for that reason, it was refreshing for a lot of people. My assumption, even with 31 minutes, was that it would still be highly edited—that there’d be a ton of investment in how it’s cut. But it moved a lot slower.
Colin: Take us into the room—what was the discussion about this video? Was it like, “Let’s try and make this 30 minutes,” or was it just that the best footage was 30 minutes?
Paddy: I think it’s a permission thing. Three or four years ago, even as a strategist, I don’t think I would have given a client permission to make a video that long and that free-flowing. But when we see the data, there’s a lot happening at once here. There’s TV happening. There’s YouTubers realizing they make more money from longer videos. And there’s also just an increase in strategy—people thinking more strategically about what to make and how to approach content.
Paddy: When I think about this video, it was such an incredible feat. How sad would it have been if it was a five-minute video? It deserved to breathe and be longer. So, I think everyone involved in this video was like, “This deserves to be 31 minutes.”
Colin: There’s something really interesting with the word permission. Because I think, as a viewer of YouTube now, when I sit on my couch and watch a YouTube video, the switching cost is so high.
Colin: And what I mean by that is, to futz around with the remote and get to another YouTube video or another channel—it’s too much friction. So, when I open the app, I’m looking for a recognizable experience that’s like a show.
Colin: The show that my wife and I watch is from Steven Lim, Adam, and Andrew. They have a new show very similar to their old show Worth It, where they try a bunch of different foods at different price points. I’ll save up three of those episodes—which are each in the 20-minute range—until we’re ready, and then we’ll watch all three in a row. And that’s the end of our YouTube viewing journey.
Samir: I would say my viewing behavior is actually very different on TV. I’m not sitting down looking for the 20-minute episode from the creator that I know. I’m actually looking for shorter videos from creators I’ve never seen before.
07:58-10:14
Colin: Really?
Samir: Yeah, I’m actually moving around a lot, and I think I’m now being served more new creators than ever on TV because I’m finding creators who are making 6-to-8-minute videos.
Samir: I enjoy that feeling of switching from moment to moment. If I want 20 to 30 minutes, I’m still reserving that for Netflix, Hulu, HBO. That, to me, is a different co-viewing experience with my wife than if I’m solo, traveling throughout YouTube.
Samir: Are you advising clients against the 12-minute video?
Paddy: No, it’s one of those things—it’s always hard to just say this. Some content deserves to be short. But my take is usually that if there’s a choice between making a great 12-minute video or a great 24-minute video, they’re both great—I’ll make the great 24-minute video. I know that sounds obvious, but because of these trends we’re talking about, even some of the things you’re mentioning...
Paddy: I think it’s really interesting to think about wanting to make videos that someone sees on their phone and then says, “I’m not watching this until I sit in front of the TV.” I actually have a playlist on one of my YouTube accounts called “Watch on TV.” And if I see a video I’ve never seen before on my phone, I think I’d be like, “Wow, look at this monster video with this crazy feat. This doesn’t deserve to be consumed on a 6-inch screen. I should put this on a 50-inch screen in my living room.”
Colin: I also think creators are starting to brand their thumbnails in a way that signals it should be watched on a TV, like a film. We spoke about Listers before—the doc about birdwatching—it looks like it’s being submitted to a film festival. There’s another one called Extreme Beachcombing. Have you seen the thumbnail for that? The graphic design shows awards and credits, which implies, “I’m not watching that on my phone. It’s 20-plus minutes. It’s asking you to watch on the TV.”
Samir: So, part of this question of permission for creators—there’s been a lot of discussion about the new homepage layout. Are you familiar with this?
Paddy: Yeah.
Samir: So, basically, when you open up YouTube now on desktop, on TV, even on mobile, there’s a lot less space for long-form videos because that space has been consumed by short-form videos. Even on desktop, it’s typically two long-form videos and then an ad, then a Shorts block. That’s a lot less real estate to get a long-form video in front of people.
10:42-11:54
Samir: And to quote you from our last episode, YouTube is a click-and-watch platform. There aren’t that many long-form videos to click on when you open up YouTube. The suggestion is to dive into Shorts. How is the emerging creator getting affected by the limited amount of real estate and the high switching cost?
Paddy: I think there’s a really big distinction between the homepage layout and when a viewer is actually in a watch session. The homepage layout is like, “What do you want today? What do you want right now?” And yeah, there’s less real estate than there was before. The natural reaction is that it’s kind of scary. A lot of us built our careers on long-form—that’s how I built my career, that’s how you guys built yours. So it’s kind of scary to think we’re going to be in a situation where our shelf space is declining while short-form shelf space is increasing.
Paddy: But at least when I look at the data—we work with hundreds of students a year—I’m not seeing too much of a decline in viewership across the channels we work with. What I am seeing is an increase in average view duration because of some of these things we talked about. Clicks are still really important, especially with less real estate, but it’s more about: when someone does click, are they staying with you for longer?
Paddy: There might be less real estate, but when people click, they’re staying with those videos for longer. And I always think it’s interesting because when Shorts was first introduced, there was a lot of panic: “This is going to nuke people’s attention spans. No one’s going to watch long-form anymore. The attention span of the youth today is going to crater.” And here we are, three years later, and all of our clients’ average view duration has gone up. People are watching for longer.
12:45-15:15
Paddy: I am a little worried about the real estate thing—how much space long-form is getting there—but I do think the amount of times you open a homepage on YouTube is different from being in a session. You open it up and think, “What do I want today? Shorts? Long-form?” When you start watching long-form, you’re suggested more long-form. You’re still going to get some Shorts, but you’re getting long-form suggestions beside you. I haven’t seen any material difference in viewership for the clients we work with just yet.
Colin: So let’s take a look at the AVD graph then.
Paddy: Yeah. If you look at the difference between 2021 to 2025, we took a number of our biggest clients and some students from our accelerator who shared their data with us. There’s been a 77% increase in average view duration on long-form over the last four years, which is pretty significant. That’s a meaningful change—from 4 minutes 35 seconds to 8 minutes.
Paddy: I don’t know exactly how this ties into the layout situation, but the way I look at it is: when someone does make that decision to click, they’re staying for longer because YouTubers are making longer, better videos than they were 4 or 5 years ago.
Samir: Yeah, to me this is all about the switching cost. We used to switch a lot from video to video, creator to creator. My behavior isn’t like that anymore. I will settle into a video much easier now, and I’ll likely settle into a channel. Maybe I’m unique in that, but that’s how I operate now.
Paddy: And we know how many people are now starting to think about their channel as shows. The obvious example is someone like the amazing Michelle Khare with Challenge Accepted. Do you know Sam Elkom?
Colin: Yeah, he was just here.
Paddy: Yeah, he went through our accelerator. He’s making his own series, basically touring around different military equipment.
Colin: Access Granted.
Paddy: And we actually had someone through our accelerator—I’ll show you here. She posted this video titled Shredded at 72: The Simple Routine Behind His Insane Strength. First of all, great thumbnail. I’m so proud of her for how well she did with that. But if you look at a show like that, she calls it Human. It’s a longevity show, and she’s thinking about this as a small creator.
Paddy: Sierra is thinking, “I’m making a show. I’m looking at Michelle Khare. I’m looking at these people. I’m making a show for my channel.” And it’s because of exactly what we’re talking about. When people start bingeing a channel, there are multiple videos they want to watch in a row—20 minutes, 30 minutes.
Paddy: I think her situation is less about worrying about the homepage layout and more about: when I have someone in the door, can they watch multiple videos in this format?
Samir: Yeah, I think continuing to center—
15:17-16:38
Colin: Yeah, I think continuing to center this conversation around permission is really important because we’re all trying to gain permission. And I’m wondering, across your clients and even what you’re seeing, how are you evaluating views versus returning viewers?
Paddy Galloway: This is a really interesting one because I’ve actually got a cool little printout to show you here.
Samir: Wait, you’ve got a ton of printouts, man. That’s not surprising at all. You acted like that was surprising. You’re like, “You wouldn’t believe it—I have a printout.”
Paddy Galloway: This might be familiar to you guys.
Colin: That is familiar. Two sad guys with yellow mics.
Samir: [laughter]
Paddy Galloway: I want to bring this one up because we talked about it on the last podcast. You know, you called me the view maximizer, right? Like, my job is to grow channels’ views. That’s what I do, and that’s what my team does. But I do think we’ve kind of reached a point—I think even the biggest creators would admit this—where we all got so obsessed with just maximizing views that we kind of forgot how important a returning viewer is, and how important building a relationship with your audience is. I think you’ve got the stats on this, but I think you mentioned like, what, 80% of views on a typical episode come from subscribers, which is much less.
Colin: Much less.
Samir: Mhm.
Colin: Especially if an episode gets caught by the algorithm and scales to 500,000 or a million views, then obviously we’re reaching a lot of new people.
Paddy Galloway: So, I have this analogy I use for this because I think creators got into this super dangerous mindset of being terrified of experimenting, terrified of doing a video that was for them and their audience as opposed to the biggest possible video. And I understand it—I think at times I’ve probably been one of the people pushing that agenda because of my focus. But I’ve always said there’s this analogy: it’s like if you have a striker in soccer, and he’s scoring five or six games in a row, and then he has a game where he doesn’t score. You know, he might still play well, but he doesn’t score. You’re not going to immediately bench that player and say, “You’re never playing again.” And I think the YouTube algorithm is quite similar. People get so afraid of it, thinking it’s going to punish them for trying something or relegate them to the dungeons of no views.
17:27-19:51
Samir: [laughter]
Colin: And also, that player’s performance could have been potentially more valuable if you look at the game tape, so to speak. Did that person maybe not make an assist but the second assist? How much work did that player actually do during that game to win?
Paddy Galloway: Exactly. So, I think it’s a bit of a trend I’m seeing where—not to say that being strategic with what you make isn’t important—but I think every channel should consider: if you want to make a video every one in four or five where it’s like, “Look, this isn’t something that’s following all the rules of YouTube—being the most optimized title, thumbnail—but it’s a video that we want to make.” And I watched this video, and I thought, “I knew you guys better after watching it.” I was like, “Wow, that was really cool. That was honest. That was vulnerable.” And I think that relationship is very important to create.
Colin: One thing I will say about this video that was very different for us is it was something we couldn’t not make.
Samir: Mhm.
Colin: Does that make sense? Like, we had no choice but to make this video. It was a therapeutic video, and we just—it was an honest thing we had to say. There’s no strategy behind it.
Samir: The least strategic thing we did last—
Colin: There’s no business case behind this. It’s just we had to say something.
Colin: And I think we are entering this era of YouTube which I have continued to call the abundance era. Twenty million videos are uploaded to YouTube every single day. Every video that I think about is probably being made right now. That’s a strategic video, right? Every video is being made, and it’s either being made by another creator or by AI or by someone prompting it. It’s being made by somebody right now. So, the only thing you can think about—or should think about—is: what’s my thing to say? What do I actually have to say? Because hopefully, you find a unique perspective that only you could share.
Now, the scary thing about sharing your own unique perspective and your own honesty is: what if nobody cares? What if nobody watches? And then I think we have to go back and realize that when you make a video that’s very honest and personal, it’s insane that 120,000 people watched it.
Samir: Yeah.
Colin: It is insane. Like, that’s just us saying something about—
Samir: Actually, one of the most incredible things that’s ever happened to us.
Colin: Like, if you really think about our entire lives, we just said something extremely niche about who we are as people, and 120,000 people watched it in a month.
19:59-22:11
Samir: Yeah.
Colin: It’s mind-blowing.
Colin: I also want to ask you this question because I’ve been having this conversation a lot: what is a lot of views now?
Samir: [laughter] You know what I mean? Like, what is a lot of views? If we’re looking at this world where there’s more content than ever, and people are settling into channels more, what are we as a community optimizing for? What’s a lot of views? What’s a big audience? What’s the success metric?
Paddy Galloway: If you’re a small creator, I always say: if you’re breaking 50 or 100,000 views on a long-form video, you’re in the top 0.01% of creators that have ever existed. Like, that is still a big number to me. And it just feels like when you get past 50,000—
Colin: That’s a lot of people.
Samir: That’s a stadium full of people.
Paddy Galloway: Yeah. This conversation gets really interesting because of how much—almost because of view-maximizing, right? And because of things like dubbing and international audiences, it’s sometimes hard to look at a video on the surface and say, “Is this good just because it has a lot of views?” Like, in my opinion, three or four years ago, when you saw a 20-million-view video, you were like, “Whoa.” That felt rare. I see 20-million-view videos all the time now. You know, we’ve worked on them. We just showed a 31-million-view video from a client. We’ve had so many videos this year that passed 10 million views with clients. It feels like that’s happening more and more.
So, yeah, the idea of what is a high view count is kind of weird now. One thing I think is true, though, is satisfaction. We talked about that a little bit last time—satisfaction as a metric. YouTube doesn’t give us that metric, so we don’t track it, we don’t measure it, and we don’t judge by it. But I bet you the satisfaction for that video—even though you maybe didn’t teach people lots of things or whatever—I bet you the satisfaction for that was high. Because viewers were like, “Oh, wow. I feel like I actually got to know Colin and Samir.” You know?
So, I think about this a lot with our clients. Not only view counts, but also: “What does this say about us? What does it say about the brands?” I love when we make a video with Red Bull and the comments are all like, “Only Red Bull could do this.” There’s that kind of real feeling around it.
Samir: Yeah.
Colin: That can feel bigger than just a huge view count, Paddy.
Paddy Galloway: I think public view counts are becoming irrelevant for the reason that you just said. Like, when you see a 20-million-view video now, you’ve seen it a million times. And we got a Short with 44 million views. I think 120,000 views on this video that we made—I don’t think it matters. I don’t think it played into the decision for a lot of people to click and watch, considering it’s majority subscribers for us.
22:30-24:56
Samir: For me, actually—and this might be counterintuitive—I’m turned off by a 20-million-view video. Like, I’m hesitant to click on it because I’m concerned about what made it so big. Like, why is this so massive, people?
Paddy Galloway: Traditionally, I would have always thought that YouTube needs to hold on to public view counts, but now, the more that these videos are being watched on TV and—
Colin: These videos are being watched on TV, and it feels more like Netflix, where viewership isn’t public. I’m starting to sway toward maybe YouTube should get rid of public view counts. Maybe it doesn’t matter.
Samir: Well, that made me feel a little bit— Colin: Paddy’s about to throw up.
Paddy: Yeah. [laughter]
Colin: That’s but—so our company is Viewmaster. Yeah, tell me what you think.
Paddy: From my perspective, the reason that would make me nervous is just because of how much I use view counts to understand trends and what the signal is, basically.
Colin: Paddy, I’m trying to put you out of business. [laughter]
Paddy: Oh, no.
Colin: Okay, Paddy’s like, “Oh, no.”
Samir: So, that’s interesting. Expand on that—that you use views to understand the signal. And I want to contrast that with, you know, now we’re starting to talk about YouTube on TV, but what are the implications for the future?
Colin: With YouTube on TV, it’s starting to feel more like a Netflix or another streamer. There are different signals for that than views. We actually oftentimes don’t know with those.
Samir: So, let’s talk about signals of trends and what the implications are for the future, the fact that that graph is probably only going up in terms of YouTube being watched on TV.
Colin: Yeah.
Samir: What is that?
Colin: Yeah. I think it’s one of those things—it is hard to measure, but when we think about that video we showed a while ago from Red Bull—
Samir: I think something I noticed with that video—and I don’t know if you noticed this, but you said that so many of your friends were telling you about this video, right?
Colin: And that’s why I watched it.
Samir: And that’s why you watched it. Similarly to if there’s a show on Netflix I need to watch.
Colin: There are so many 20, 30 million-view videos that have been uploaded in the last year that none of us have seen, and no one’s ever talked about. They’ve just gone into the ether.
Samir: But some videos seem to just get this kind of public discourse around them, you know? And it’s very similar to when there’s a Netflix show or whatever.
Colin: It’s like, you know, my mother’s calling me saying, “Have you seen this Squid Game thing?” a few years ago. It’s insane. I can’t believe it.
Samir: Viewership and cultural relevance are two totally different things.
Paddy: Yes. And it’s all about that kind of—like regrettable watch time versus watch time that makes you feel, “Wow, I just spent time doing something or watching something that was really special.”
24:56-27:20
Colin: I don’t want to make too much of a big prediction, but I really think as we look at some of the data we’ve shown, some of the examples we’ve shown—
Paddy: You can’t get away with just a great title and thumbnail with no substance anymore.
Colin: And I feel like you maybe could two or three years ago.
Samir: It’s subjective.
Colin: Yeah.
Paddy: It’s a bit subjective.
Colin: I want to know what you think about public viewership.
Paddy: I like it from a trend point of view—being able to, from a strategist’s perspective, as the person who gets channels more views, I like to look at it and say, “That gives me some signal of what’s working.”
Paddy: But I think it speaks to all of our points—that signal has weakened over the last year or two.
Paddy: Because of a lot of things like dubbing and things like that. And that doesn’t mean that international views aren’t still really important—they are.
Paddy: But, you know, there could be the same video, and one has dubbing and one doesn’t, and the one with dubbing has four times the views. So you might intuitively think, “That’s a better video or a more popular video,” but it’s just because the other one didn’t have dubbing.
Paddy: It depends on what you’re optimizing for. Like, if I’m selling a product in America, views overseas aren’t as important to me as English-speaking views in America.
Paddy: So I think it matters a little bit about what you’re optimizing for, but I look at the views for a lot of signal in that sense.
Paddy: And I think taking that away, people will find other ways to figure out what’s working, but we are in this interesting stage.
Paddy: One of the other points I was going to bring up is actually another video, which I’ll show you here.
Paddy: So we’ve got this one here: Atheist Goes to Christian Church for the First Time.
Paddy: This was someone who went through one of our accelerator cohorts last year. At the time of joining the cohort, it was like a 3,000-5,000 subscriber channel. And then throughout the cohort, they were able to ideate this with my team and came up with this format, which I think is really interesting.
Paddy: There are so many reasons that went viral—just kind of a classic, interesting story with a click-to-answer premise.
Paddy: The point I was going to make here is this video was made, and I remember telling this creator—and I remember my team telling this creator—you’ve got to keep digging. You’ve struck gold; keep digging.
Paddy: And over the course of the next six months, this video was basically remade with different churches, different situations, different religions.
Paddy: And I think the reason that happened—this is to tie us all together here—is because of public view counts.
27:20-29:46
Paddy: Because everyone else saw, “Damn, that video did really well for that small channel. Let me double down on it really quickly and either steal it or adapt it for my channel.”
Samir: Other channels made it?
Paddy: No, he made it. But the reason he made it is because of the point I was saying to him, which was like, “Hey, channels are going to double down really quickly on your stuff.”
Paddy: And there’s a sort of talking point creators used to have, which is, “I don’t want to over-milk something,” which I think is very valid and fair.
Paddy: But I always make the point: if you don’t milk something, someone else will. Someone else will double down on this format and get the growth and success from it.
Samir: But wouldn’t it be better if the viewership wasn’t public because fewer people would double down on his idea?
Samir: And he’d still get all the data he needs to make the decision to make it again. He’d still have viewership, average view duration, click-through rate—all the things we care about, returning subscribers versus new viewers.
Samir: He’d still have all that data for himself.
Colin: It might actually award originality more.
Samir: Yeah.
Colin: It would definitely create more originality because I think it would play a lot into the audience’s decision-making.
Paddy: I actually disagree. Like, I personally won’t click a video if it has too few views. That’s a problem for me.
Paddy: When YouTube occasionally sends you a video and it has, like, 240 views, I’m like, “That’s YouTube trying to just slot someone in here. I’m not interested in that.”
Paddy: But anything above, like, 10 to 20,000 in that range, I’m game. It doesn’t matter to me if it has 10 or 20,000 or if it has 50 million.
Colin: So, I think the other thing about public viewership, too, and optimizing for views—I think what you said is correct: what are we optimizing for as YouTube creators?
Colin: Because, you know, I only saw this because you tweeted about it. This never came across my feed. This is a successful series, but there’s this other conversation around cultural relevance and brand relevance.
Colin: You mentioned Michelle Khare. Michelle Khare is very relevant to the YouTube ecosystem.
Colin: Sean Evans is even more relevant to the broader cultural ecosystem.
Colin: And, you know, a lot of times, even if we look back at Casey Neistat in his heyday, his viewership was amazing for what he was doing at the time, but it wasn’t astronomical.
Colin: It wasn’t Ryan Trahan, Dude Perfect. But I think sometimes, as creators right now, you know—
Colin: Optimizing purely for views is a dangerous game because you might get lost in the cultural relevance conversation.
29:46-31:44
Colin: And to have cultural relevance is like, what is my story beyond views? So, like Sam Eckholm’s a great example. He’s an awesome creator. I would bet a lot of people right now are hearing about him for the first time. How does he get elevated into the—
Samir: How does he get elevated into the broader cultural relevance conversation? He makes stuff like Cleo Abram—similar stuff. They’re in the same category. He could be in that broader conversation.
Paddy: You know what I just thought about when you were saying that? It made me think of such an interesting point. I’m not going to name the creator, but I was on a call with one a few months ago—let’s just say they have between 50 and 100 million subscribers. One of the biggest creators in the world.
Colin: Okay.
Paddy: And this creator gets tons of views—very well-known, huge audience. They were telling me, “Look, I’ve noticed I’m not converting as well as I want when I sell things. I want to build a better connection with my audience. I don’t think I have that.” They’ve solved the viral equation, but they haven’t solved the broader connection.
I’d watched a few of their videos beforehand—they were good, well-made, all that. At the start of the call, just casually, I asked about their background. And they said, “Oh, I dropped out of school to do YouTube when I was 15. It was a huge risk, all these things...” And I’m thinking, “Wow, that’s admirable. That took a lot of guts. What a story.” They’re just such an interesting, likable, young creator.
Then I asked, “Does your audience know that?” And they said, “No.” And I’m like, “Why?” It feels like sometimes we get so caught up in optimizing for quick, viral, perfect content. But at the end of the day, people watch humans. And when the ability to make big spectacle videos has been democratized to a certain degree, I think personality just takes over. That’s why people like Ryan, people like Michelle, have that cultural relevance.
I was just saying to my friend earlier—we were talking about this podcast and some of the things we might discuss. If you flash back to 2018 or 2019, MrBeast made a video—cutting a table in half with a plastic knife. I was joking: “If a kid did that today, they’d spend two weeks cutting their table in half, destroy their life, and get five views.” Because nobody would really care. It doesn’t feel like the kind of video that would work now. We’re just in a different meta, a different world.
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31:44-33:07
Colin: I want to talk about format versus a show. When you’ve pushed people to build a show—or how much you’re pushing people to build a show. Because something I notice on YouTube right now is that with more viewership on TV, with more of what you just said—you need some element of a brand story beyond just viewership. Having the casing of a show is a great way to do that.
Hot Ones is obviously the leading example, but we’re seeing this more recently with, you know, Drew Ski’s dating show Could Have Been Love—that’s a show. Quinlan Blackwell has Feeding Starving Celebrities—that’s a show. Speed launched Speed Ghost Pro—that’s a show. Even when he does live streams in Africa, he makes it appointment viewing. He makes it a thing. And I think that’s the only way for creators to cross that threshold of cultural relevance now—making your thing a thing and making it a show.
Paddy: I think using this creator Evan as an example—his video Atheist Goes to Christian Church for the First Time—that’s a format he’s replicated again and again. And if I find that video algorithmically or in a vacuum, I’m like, “This guy makes videos. This is a video he made.” But if it has an intro and it’s called Finding Meaning and there’s a show logo, and his whole purpose is Finding Meaning in his life, then I’m more inclined to go look for the next episode, to remember the next episode, and to see him as someone different than just “this is a kid making videos about religion.”
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33:07-34:24
Colin: And maybe that doesn’t have to change in the packaging as much as just the intro, style, how it’s made—
Paddy: Title graphic.
Colin: Yeah, you start with a format. I think it starts as a format and then it goes into something—
Paddy: I even think—I don’t know all of Michelle Khare’s story, but I’m pretty sure it started with, “Oh, this is my format. I try things. I tried this thing.” And then it’s like, “Oh, wow, there’s actually a show here.” And before you know it, there’s a name, and you’re looking forward to every episode or whatnot.
A big distinction I always make: it’s Top Gear, not Breaking Bad. It’s not necessarily an ongoing deep narrative as much as it is individual episodes that have a format, so they kind of become the same thing.
There’s actually another example of this I’ll show you really quickly. This is a fascinating example: the channel Golden Cobra Family—a dog channel—went through our accelerator in 2024 with 11,000 subscribers. Now they’re close to a million, if not over. They had this video: Golden Retriever Meets His New Sister, Puppy Sister for the First Time because they’d just adopted a new Doberman. And I saw that and was like, “You should do that again.” So they did a video: First Week Together. And I remember them saying, “Okay, well, that’s done well twice now. I did great.” It got over 2 million views during the cohort—I remember it went viral during the cohort, which was wild.
But then they said, “Well, that’s that, done then, you know?” Because naturally, you can’t get a new dog every week unless you’re unethical. You’re not going to just adopt a new puppy every week to make content. But I was like, “No, you’re thinking too literally. The format is ‘dog meets vulnerable other dog.’” Like, “Oh, just like an innocent little puppy, your dog meeting it, the interaction.” So now, almost their entire channel has been built around this format. Like Golden Retriever Meets Completely Shut-Down Rescue for the First Time. There’s a limited amount of dogs you can adopt, but there’s no limited amount of dogs you can make a video around and showcase in your content.
That’s an example of—I think—creators traditionally being in this mindset of “I come up with ideas. I come up with new ideas. I need five or six different buckets of content I make around.” And the thing I keep seeing is just these creators whose entire channel is a format. And then over time, maybe that transitions into a show—like the Golden Cobra Show.
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36:00-38:11
Colin: Yeah, so when do you advise turning this into a show?
Paddy: I think it has to feel like a natural evolution as opposed to a big launch. We as humans always want to do these big, ribbon-cutting, band-aid-ripping moments: “It’s this now!” But I think it becomes something where it’s a bit of branding mixed in, consistent format. And before you know it, it just feels like a show. I think it’s a slow shift as opposed to an immediate thing.
Colin: What happens in this video? Like, how can it be 15 minutes long?
Paddy: [laughter] You know what I mean? Like—
Colin: Yeah, I feel like the story’s over if I’m being honest. When I look at it, I’m like—
Samir: I mean, I want to see it happen because it sounds cute.
Colin: But I think once I see it, I’m good. How is this 15 minutes long?
Paddy: Well, now you’re exposing me for not having watched the video.
Colin & Samir: [laughter] How dare you?
Paddy: This creator went through the program a long time ago—great person, his name’s JJ, and he’s got a great team now that helps him with these videos. They do a great job. But when you look at these videos and when I’ve watched them in the past, there’s a story behind the rescue dog—what’s happening, their interactions. It’s not just “Oh, they’re meeting.” It’s a whole story around this kind of beautiful thing, which is the fact that his dog is incredible with other dogs and can kind of bring them out of their shell. So it becomes almost like a transformation: this dog that’s afraid of other dogs meets this lovable golden retriever. And that’s the story.
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Colin: We’re also seeing creators with shows distribute those shows on other platforms—making money by syndication.
Paddy: Yes.
Colin: The show is showing up on Netflix or Hulu or Tubi. So there’s also, as you continue to grow and some of these channels see significant viewership, opportunities to put your shows on other platforms.
Samir: I looked at how Amazon Prime Video did this with Jimmy. And obviously, Beast Games—number one show on Prime Video right now. It’s the signature show.
Paddy: Right now, it’s their signature show. They’ve invested a ton of money into it. Part of that is they’ve brought Jimmy’s videos onto Prime Video, but they’re segmented and categorized. So there’s one like MrBeast: Insane Competitions, MrBeast: Sports Competitions—they’re all different shows. The formats have been organized into shows.
Paddy: And I think the other example is Jesser—he’s now on Hulu, killing it with Jesser. But it’s just his YouTube videos repackaged into a show.
Colin: Yeah.
Paddy: Again, if we look at the democratization of voice, YouTubers can tell great stories that capture people’s attention. It doesn’t require Hollywood production studios. But when abundance happens—when there are so many of us, all being watched on the same screen with limited space—marketing matters a lot. And that’s what a show does. A show changes how it’s talked about, how it’s perceived, and the recall of it.
38:34-40:42
Samir: Totally. And I think a point I’d make on this is that it’s about the optionality of having that opportunity to make a show. You can do that now with YouTube. I still think we’re not quite there in terms of pure episodic, multi-show narratives, because all the things we’re talking about now still feel like individual videos built into a show format.
Paddy: And that has to do with the platform, too. The platform isn’t set up to bring you from episode to episode. It’s set up to send you the next thing they think you’ll find most satisfactory.
Colin: Yeah.
Samir: But I think also on that point, there’s still a place for creators who just make incredible individual videos. I think Red Bull is an example where I don’t think there’s like The Red Bull Show. It’s just Red Bull doing these spectacles and feats.
Samir: I wouldn’t say, “Oh, we’re going to make that into a show.” It’s more like, “Well, we have the opportunity to do that because we can break through. In that placement on TV, where there are two videos, there’s a high chance we might get there for a lot of viewers.” I think it’s still a great opportunity for creators who can do that to focus on individual videos.
Samir: But it’s interesting—maybe like, you know, that video has 8 million views, which is insane. But it’s a bit unrealistic to think about, like, a dog channel getting 25 or 30 million views every video. So their way of building something strong with momentum might be a show. That’s not 20 million views every time, but maybe it’s like two or three million views an episode.
Colin: Do you think there’s a future where I open up YouTube on my TV, and instead of titles and thumbnails for singular videos, they’re all titles of shows and thumbnails for shows?
Samir: Similar to Netflix.
Colin: Yeah. What do you think?
Paddy: I could see it as a beta test that they try for certain people, but I don’t think it’s in their best interest. At the end of the day, they just want you to find the next video you’ll enjoy the most, not necessarily the next video from the creator you’re watching in that moment.
Samir: I think it would make sense to surface shows like that that you already watch. In my opinion, if they already know you watch Challenging Satan, and there’s a new episode, I could see that being surfaced or displayed that way. But YouTube has built its platform on this kind of re-organic discoverability. Although we’re talking about how great shows can be, there’s a counterpoint: does it become a little more gatekept then?
41:05-43:27
Samir: It’s like, these are the shows that already exist, and a new creator starting out grows by coming up with a great individual idea. The funnel kind of goes: you have ideas, you come up with lots of ideas, you try lots of things, most of them fail. This thing works, you try it again. Oh, now it’s a format, and then over time, it’s a show. But if it’s only shows being displayed on TV in different places, how do you find that initial testing ground where you’re almost making pilots?
Colin: Mhm.
Paddy: Yeah, I believe the beauty of YouTube is being there for the rise. You know, watching Jimmy when he had far fewer subscribers and he was making Minecraft videos, or watching Ryan when he was doing commentary videos, or Michelle when she left BuzzFeed and just started experimenting. Even for our audience, who’s been through the many waves of us, they now get to have a different lens with what we do.
Samir: Yeah, I like the fact that one channel that I love and think does this well is Chris Williamson and Modern Wisdom. Modern Wisdom is a show on his channel—it’s a podcast that he hosts. But then occasionally, he’ll do a vlog, and it just does really well.
Colin: And they do really well.
Samir: Yeah.
Paddy: That’s our video.
Colin: Right. That’s this again.
Samir: Right.
Paddy: There’s an amazing graph that Nielsen put out about the most-watched shows from 2020 to 2025. Most of those shows weren’t produced in 2025, which is incredible. But one of those shows is The Office, which has been off the air for 13 years.
Paddy: As we see creators come to TV, The Office is one of those shows that has permission. You get on an airplane, you open up what they have, and you’re in a paralysis of choice. The Office is probably what you’re going to watch.
Paddy: I think a lot about how you create that. On YouTube, one of the very few channels that has that is Good Mythical Morning—comfort watching, trust, 3,000 episodes of one show, permission. To me, that’s a very impressive feat. But it’s not to say it’s the only path. It’s just that when I think about longevity and brand building, I think a lot about The Office.
Colin: That is wild when you think about it. If I was to go on an airplane and just think about the maybe four or five shows I’d be looking for—you know, the original UK Office came out in 2001. The US Office, Parks and Recreation—these are brands that have been around, and you just have that comfort of, “I know this is going to be good.”
Samir: Yeah.
Colin: Yeah.
Samir: Yeah, maybe that’s what YouTube needs. We have the situation where you go on YouTube and you don’t get that feeling of, “I know this is going to be good.” You get this crazy discoverability, which is why we all love it and why we’re all sitting here—because of the YouTube algorithm’s discoverability, being able to put us in front of people. Like, 118,000 people, you know?
43:43-46:10
Colin: Yeah.
Samir: But I think maybe the difference is you’re not getting that comfortable, “I know what I’m getting, this is the thing I want to watch,” that you get with a series and a brand built over time. So maybe the future’s a mixture of both.
Colin: I’m curious—if you could leave us with some formats or a list of formats that you know are working on YouTube right now. This is a format that’s been going for a while—100 Years of X. We sat down with a YouTube channel we love called Speed. They did 100 Years of Camping Gear. Are there certain frameworks or formats you’re seeing right now that are just kind of working?
Paddy: Every.
Colin: Every.
Samir: Every.
Paddy: So, Every something. Going back to this creator—he was a very small channel at the start of last year, and now he has over 175,000 subscribers. He told me himself he’s making six figures and getting to travel the world in the space of a year, which is amazing. He had this format: Atheist Goes to Christian Church, Christian Goes to Mosque for the First Time—this really interesting exploration of different religions with that contrast as a format.
Paddy: Another format he’s had a lot of success with is Every. So, I Went to Every Christian Denomination Church, I Went to Every [Insert Thing]. I’ve seen that appearing a lot on YouTube over the last few months: I Bought Every Robot Vacuum, Here’s the Best, I Read Every Self-Help Book, Here Are the Seven Most Important Lessons.
Paddy: I think Every is a really interesting format I’m seeing out there. And it’s funny because when people think about that, they take it too literally. They’re like, “I can’t read every self-help book. I can’t read every business book.” It’s like, no—he read a lot.
Colin: Right, right.
Samir: You know, to the point where it’s basically Every, right?
Paddy: I just thought of a funny title: I Watched Every YouTube Video, Here Are the Four Best.
Colin & Samir: [laughter]
Colin: [laughter] It’s just kind of funny. Like, because it’s ridiculous. Samir: Totally unbelievable. Colin: It’s totally unbelievable, but it’s still interesting. You’re like, okay, you watched a lot of videos. What are the four best? Samir: Exactly, yeah. Any other formats that you’re seeing working?
Paddy: It’s a classic format that’s been around a while—testing unique products. I watched a video recently, I can’t remember the exact title, but it was like, “I bought every accessory for a Tesla.” And it’s just testing all these different accessories.
Samir: The other thing I’ve seen is like the “level” thing with the different colors—”every level of blank.” Colin: Yeah. Samir: That’s a good one. Paddy: That’s been one that has been working. And it’s “every” again. Colin: It’s “every” again, you’re right. Wow, interesting. Why do you think that is? What’s the psychology behind why—
Paddy: It’s just like a level of effort that I’m not going to make as a viewer. It’s a big curiosity gap. Colin: Yeah. Paddy: I’m not going to go out and read every self-help book or buy every camera or do all this, but someone did a pretty good job at least. I’ll check it out. Samir: And I also think it ties back into our first part of this episode when we talked about TV and length. It’s like “every” just feels whole. It feels very expansive. It’s going to cover a lot of things. It’s a big thing, you know. Colin: Comprehensive, yeah. Samir: Yeah, comprehensive. So, when you look at even the videos I’m seeing work really well in education, a lot of it is that thing of like, “my entire playbook.” We made this video with the creator Ramit Sethi last year, and it was like, “I’ve made millions of people rich—here’s my entire playbook” was the title on the thumbnail. And it just feels like you’re getting this big, expansive, whole thing.
47:00-48:51
Colin: That was kind of brought on by like the Hormozi, Simon Sinek vibe—”all of my business knowledge in 37 minutes, 15 years of...” Samir: Yes. Paddy: And we did something similar. Yeah, but that’s really interesting. Colin: That video, correct me if I’m wrong, but I’m pretty sure that video probably started okay, kind of slow, and then over time just— Samir: A steady grower. Colin: Mhm. Yeah. It spans like for you guys over a decade, right? Like it’s so much of your knowledge curated. Paddy: There was another really interesting video where someone went to the location of the Windows desktop screensaver. Colin: That’s very funny. Oh, I saw— Samir: Yeah. Colin: And it was very good. Paddy: Saw that. There’s a few reasons why I like this video. First of all, the thumbnail is not anything spectacular. I don’t know exactly how to name this format, but there’s something very interesting about it because what does it tap into? It’s a little bit of a spectacle. It’s like a real thing. Like this guy’s going to go travel to this place. That’s really interesting. It’s also kind of nostalgic.
Colin: Mhm. Samir: We. It’s also a question that we’ve always posed to ourselves. Like, what is that? That was such an interesting video because the first two or three minutes he’s just figuring out where it is. Paddy: Yeah. I think also the suggestion of something comprehensive and complete is a really important one. Where it’s like, in that video, I know the video ends once he travels to that place. Colin: That’s also why building videos are really helpful. You know, “I built this thing.” It’s like, cool, the video ends when that thing is built.
Samir: Yeah, speaking of, look at that. I mean, that’s a crazy thumbnail. Is that a real—How real is that? Because sometimes I look at this stuff, it’s very satisfying, but I’m like, how exaggerated is that versus how real is it? Paddy: And maybe that’s what draws the click for a lot of people. Colin: Yeah, that’s fair. Samir: 17 million views. Colin: Few things, yeah. Samir: You just need to know what it is. Colin: Similar to “I bought every” or “I read every self-help book.” You’re like, no, you didn’t. Samir: [laughter] Colin: But I’ll see how far you got. Paddy: 51 minutes. This was made in 2020. You saw 51 minutes, you’d be like, what? 50— Colin: Now it doesn’t feel that scary. It’s like, oh, I’m watching on TV. It’s actually a fantastic video.
Samir: So, “building a tiny office pod under my stairs.” Colin: Yep. Samir: Tell me as a creator, why shouldn’t I use a more realistic version of what I actually built? Unless that is the real version. Paddy: His build was actually pretty impressive. Like, it’s definitely— Colin: Okay, I got to be honest, I’m watching the video almost exactly. Paddy: Yeah, really? Colin: It’s enhanced. Paddy: It’s almost—Okay, hold on. Because let’s talk about this video, because this is impressive. This is a very unbelievable thumbnail. Colin: Yeah. Samir: Can you just talk about what you like about the thumbnail and the title? Like why this is so highly clickable? Because another thing about this channel, Man Made, is it’s 1 year old. Paddy: I’m pretty sure this creator actually applied to our cohort. I might be in one of our cohorts coming up, which is hilarious because I’m like, you just did it. Colin: [laughter]
49:34-50:20
Paddy: But the thing to me about this is, I mean, first of all, just the shapes—the triangular shape, and then the stairs. I think that already is just like visually satisfying. Whenever there’s something we really need to focus on, I love when we have some open space. It’s so interesting. I used to always think about how good a thumbnail he’d done wrong. I think if this end of the sort of like room was at the very end of the thumbnail, I think you don’t look at it and see it as like this thing that’s being placed in someone’s stairs. It just looks more like, oh, it’s just a cool room. I think if that wasn’t there, I think this video would have 3 million views instead of 17 million views. And that’s like such a tiny design choice—having that little space. The person walking up the stairs, I bet you anything in his first draft of this thumbnail that person wasn’t there, and then he was like, “Eh, maybe I’ll put someone walking up the stairs.” And then it really creates that feeling of like that person doesn’t look like they know he’s there. And I think that helps a lot as well.
Colin: Yeah. Samir: The little details like—I don’t know—I don’t even know what this yellow thing is, but just that little yellow and then the warmth. Paddy: And one thing I would say with this format I think is really interesting as well is, you know, kids’ content on YouTube is content that’s made for a younger audience. Like, that’s kind of honestly a bulk of YouTube these days. There’s so much content out there for kids. A lot of creators just realized that the biggest demographic of people who watch the most— Colin: They have the most available time. Samir: Are kids the most available time, so they end up catering for that. But the interesting thing about this is it’s been a huge trend in the kind of more early teen space to make these like secret rooms. “I built a secret room.” Colin: This is doing it, but I think this is done in a way that we could watch. Samir: Yeah. Colin: It’s more for us. So it’s like taking that format and I think that’s the thing—you know, I’ve always kind of critiqued this mindset of creators who think they’re too good for this kids’ content stuff. They’re like, “Oh, you know, that’s terrible. I would never make—” Samir: There’s still things to be learned from it, you know. There’s still—you can still look and say, “Well, what would this look like if we aged it up?”
51:21-53:51
Paddy: Like, I always think, you know, I remember someone really critiquing MrBeast on Twitter one time, like people seem to love to do. And they were just like, “Look at this. Like, who would watch this?” And I’m like, that’s me as a nearly 30-year-old man. I’m not going to turn on Nickelodeon and be like, “Look at this. Who would watch this?” You know. Whereas I like to go and like, “Look at this. What happens if we try to make this for guys in their 20s and 30s?” Colin: Right. Samir: Because I learn from it. Colin: Because I’m like, “Yeah, I want to watch that. That looks cool.” Paddy: This is the first frame. Colin: Well done, yeah. Paddy: But look at that open space that he created, right? Colin: Touché.
Samir: “I’m building a tiny office under my stairs because I desperately need it if I’m going to get any work done in my crazy house. I’ll be revealing the final project to ex-Pittsburgh Steeler and famous YouTube woodworker John Malecki, and I’ve got a feeling that somehow I’m going to mess this up.” Colin: “I messed up big time.” Samir: What an incredible intro that was. That was everything that I did not expect. Paddy: I think that’s what’s great about it—it confirmed the click. Yes, this is exactly the video that the thumbnail said it was going to be, but what you didn’t know and didn’t expect to get was— Colin: That I’m going to be revealing this—
Colin: I’m going to be revealing this to a woodworker who’s really an expert, a celebrity.
Samir: Yeah.
Colin: And then he gives you the personality—he makes it personal immediately with that personality of, “I’m definitely going to mess this up.” Cut to real time: “I messed it up.” That’s 16 seconds.
Samir: Yeah. I mean, that is—like, that’s perfect YouTube.
Colin: And the thing is, it’s a 51-minute video, but the intro was 16 seconds.
Samir: I said this earlier in the episode—people are always so extreme. Like, it’s black, it’s white, it’s “rip the band-aid off.” But people will start saying, “Now you can go slower on YouTube, you can go longer.” And it’s like, well, you can still take some of the lessons that made the retention-editing era of four or five years ago special.
Colin: You can still capitalize on the first 15 seconds as you should, and then let it breathe.
Samir: This reminds me a lot of that bird-watching docuseries. Once I understood the personality of it, I was down to watch it from start to finish. And I think here, now that I know this guy’s personality, I’m so down to watch 50 minutes of it.
Colin: Yeah, giving someone a glimpse of your personality in the first 15 seconds is so important.
Samir: Like, the first time I realized that in that bird-watching doc, they made a really dry joke. And it was so deadpan, and I went to myself, “Huh. I’m in. I’m waiting for the next one of those.”
Colin: Here be my older brother Quentin. And last year, he was diagnosed with a rare and aggressive form of early-onset bird-watcher.
Samir: Yeah, it’s amazing. Wow. That is a fantastic video.
Colin: Insane.
53:52-56:17
Samir: What are you seeing in the world of AI? What’s happening with AI on YouTube?
Paddy: I saw some recent data that YouTube shared—92% of creators are using AI in their workflow. I guess it’s not that surprising, but...
Colin: It is crazy that it’s almost everyone.
Paddy: Yeah. I would assume that if you extrapolate that to human beings in their workflow, it would be around the same. Do you think, like, working humans—over 90%?
Samir: Maybe we’re in a bit of a bubble with what we do, but yeah, I would assume at least, you know, when you say “use AI in workflow,” people think about generative video potentially. But there are just so many different entry points—whether it’s research, workshopping a title. There are so many different ways to engage with it.
Paddy: Our clients are using it in different ways—whether it’s researching, helping produce videos. Generative video isn’t something I feel like I’ve got to the level at yet that I would incorporate it in video, apart from using it for motion graphics or B-roll or stuff like that. Thumbnails, though—AI-enhanced thumbnails—you’re not doing anything crazy. You’re just sort of taking what was in the video and using AI to create something special.
Like, I’ve got a thumbnail here: a client we signed a couple years ago. This was our big breakout video with him—19 million views, a private tour of an Indian billionaire’s secret wildlife rescue center. That thumbnail—it’s based on what happened in the video. There are two tigers in the video, the monkey, the hummingbirds—everything is in the video, but it’s heavily enhanced with AI. And that was one of the most viral videos last December. Got 20 million views on a video, and that’s an AI-enhanced thumbnail.
Colin: To me, that’s one end of the spectrum. That’s just a reality to me—that’s like a new tool.
Paddy: Yeah.
Colin: It’s like when Photoshop came around and magazines were around, people would be like, “That’s so Photoshopped.”
Samir: Mhm.
Colin: It’s the equivalent here. Like, “That’s very AI,” but we accept it. It’s a design tool. It has implications on workflow, but largely, I think on YouTube, that’s accepted.
Paddy: There are a few other elements of AI that are happening, which comes to the beauty of what social has historically been: that’s a real person telling me something.
Samir: So, I saw—I think it was one of the heads of product at Instagram. I don’t know if you saw this.
Colin: Adam Mosseri’s post, yeah.
Samir: It was about how, in the future, it’s just going to be easier to identify something as human as opposed to AI. And that was the first time I was like, “Whoa. Like, that’s crazy.”
Colin: That’s the head of Instagram.
Samir: Head of Instagram. So, like, he’s being definitive there, saying, you know, what made creators great was authenticity, but authenticity can now be manufactured.
56:27-58:48
Colin: Scary.
Paddy: The answer, which I still don’t have yet—and I want to have, and maybe you can help with this—is, well, then what does it mean to signify something as human if it’s easier to do that? How do you do that? What are the ways to do that? Because it’s not lo-fi, DIY—it’s not, because that’s going to be replicated, too. It already has been. What is it?
Samir: To me, it’s like, there are some things that are moats that are very hard for AI to cross, right? And I think, you know, the obvious answer would be like, what makes you human? What’s the uniqueness about you? But ultimately, AI can create that narrative for themselves pretty easily.
Paddy: Sometimes it’s like access. For example, this video that’s still on the table right in front of us here—this is the first time anyone’s ever taken a YouTube camera into the world’s biggest wildlife sanctuary in India. It’s called Vantara. AI doesn’t have that, because it doesn’t know what’s there, right? So, there’s something to the fact that this is a video where someone’s actually going and doing something.
I think about that, like, even with one of our brand clients, the Philadelphia Eagles. You know, I know this might sound like a tangent, but ultimately, that’s Jordan Mailata—you know, incredible football player. AI can create a model of him, but it’s not him. We have access to him, and we can make that in a video.
Colin: It almost feels like we’re competing in unfair advantages. Like, what are our unfair advantages we still have as humans over AI? We can go do something, we can walk to something and shoot something. We can have access to something that AI still can’t have. But I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t a little worrying.
Paddy: The only moat right now is brand, and again, we keep coming back to that. It’s like brand and permission. And then it’s just having honest discussions about what you’re trying to say. Because, again, like I said, on YouTube and on social, everything you think you should make is going to get made, right? Everything that you and I could be like, “That would be a strategically good video,” it will probably get made already. So then, if that’s already made, what’s the other thing to make? What do I actually want to make?
Colin: Let’s think about the channels that we think have been affected by AI—and not necessarily generative video, but like, actually just AI as a tool, whether it’s chat, you know, Claude, whatever.
Paddy: I think the sort of channels that maybe are feeling that a little bit are the kind of like how-tos.
Samir: For sure. Five productivity tips—it’s already a video you see these days. You know, I see a video which is like, “How I transformed my entire life to be the most productive person in human history,” or something. It’s like, well, why does that have 500,000 views and the video with five productivity tips only has five? It’s because that’s a unique person talking about their perspective, their experience.
59:04-1:00:15
Even someone like Ali Abdaal, right? I bet if you look at Ali Abdaal’s videos now and compare it to 2020, 2021, I think there’s been a shift towards just leaning into what only he can say.
Colin: His experience, his perspective.
Samir: Yeah. I always think that, like, what can I say that others can’t? What can I cover that others can’t?
Paddy: There’s a study done around the premise of AI slop, suggesting that about 20% of videos fed to a new YouTube user are what you’d consider slop. One of the most prominent channels is a channel from India called Bandar Apna Dost. I don’t know if you’ve seen some of the views on this.
Samir: I’ve seen this.
Colin: You’ve seen this?
Samir: Yeah.
Paddy: I mean, these are unbelievable views. All this to say, space is getting limited, I think. Or is it ever expanding? Is YouTube this ever-expanding environment where there’s actually just more and more room than we think? Because a lot of the videos you’ve shown me, I’ve never seen, but they have...
Samir: I see videos with 20 million or 8 million views all the time, and I’ve never even seen the thumbnail. So, is YouTube just continuously making more and more space for new creators? Or do we have to get more competitive?
Paddy: The pie is growing. The data backs this up—there’s more viewership on YouTube now than there was in 2019. To me, the real threat of AI is just the volume and speed at which content can be created. Any algorithm that isn’t very sophisticated is going to struggle with that.
I think YouTube’s algorithm is pretty sophisticated, but if I had to compare, I’d say the long-form algorithm is way more advanced. It’s been around longer—since 2010 or 2011—so there’s more data, more inputs, more fine-tuning. Shorts, on the other hand, only launched in 2022 or 2023, so it’s still catching up. It’s a good algorithm, but I think that’s why you sometimes see random Shorts you didn’t ask for and think, How did this even get here?
1:01:01-1:03:15
Colin: Mhm.
Samir: It feels more curated on long-form YouTube. So, the thing I worry about is: if there’s such a massive volume of content being made, does that overwhelm the less sophisticated algorithms? With the long-form audience, I think—
Colin: If you told me how many videos get uploaded a year, I should know that, but let’s just say—
Samir: What’s 20 million a day?
Paddy: 20 million a day. I don’t know how—
Paddy: 20 million a day. Multiply that by, you know, it’s basically 2 billion. Multiply that by 365.
Paddy: Yeah, it’s a lot. So, there’s 20 million a day, right? If you told me that’s going to increase to 60 million with AI, I don’t think that really affects these kinds of videos. I don’t think it affects my clients. I don’t think it affects the top YouTube content out there.
Paddy: To me, YouTube’s algorithm is a ranking algorithm. It doesn’t matter how much you feed into it—it’s still just outputting the 20, 30, 40, 50 videos that are going to be consumed by the right viewers. In theory, it could be 100 million videos uploaded a day, and if 80 million of them are AI slop... That’s the question, though.
Paddy: If AI gets good enough where we’re like, “Wow, it’s not just a novelty—these are actually really good long-form videos,” then I get concerned. But I don’t think it’s going to affect things immediately. It feels like we’re on an iceberg that’s shifting around a little bit.
Colin: To me, it’s similar to the TV conversation. It’s not just algorithmic curation that’s going to need to happen. There’s going to need to be some level of editorial curation on YouTube, I think.
Colin: If we get to 80 million videos a day—which might come quicker than we think—
Samir: Mhm.
Colin: Right? Like, if we’re at 20 million right now with what we’ve just seen with AI video, we might get to 100 million videos a day very quickly. And that brings up the question of curation.
Samir: This brings up the question of curation. How does that word feel to you as a YouTuber?
Paddy: I love it. I think curation is a great thing. Curators and tastemakers have always been high value in our culture.
Colin: Can I make a counterargument, though?
Paddy: Please.
Colin: One of the things that made YouTube so special was the lack of curation—the absence of gatekeepers. It was the Wild West of what got clicked on and what didn’t. I always thought that was so interesting. I used to say, “The YouTube algorithm doesn’t care who your dad is.”
Paddy: Mhm.
Colin: And that’s not to talk down on anyone who’s made a career in other areas, but naturally, there are a lot of layers to it. It’s like, this person likes it, so they put it on. There was this radio host in the UK in the ‘70s and ‘80s—I think his name was David Peel. I might be getting his name wrong—but he was a radio host, and if you think about all the biggest bands from that era, like The Smiths, Joy Division, all these different bands, he just found their demo tapes and was like, “Wow, I’m putting this on.” And he birthed so many musicians, which is amazing. But he probably missed a lot, too. He probably thought, “Oh, I missed that one. That would have been great.”
1:03:54-1:05:21
Paddy: I think the great thing about algorithms is they’re better at not missing things. But when you have so much volume—like 100 million uploads—it might get quite difficult even for an algorithm.
Colin: Yeah, and my career is a result of the lack of—
Paddy: My career is a result of the lack of curation—which I love—but I think it’s cyclical. When you get to that much volume, curation has to come back.
Colin: Mhm. I love curation. What do you think?
Samir: I’m torn. I agree with you that it’s a beautiful thing that it doesn’t matter who you are—if you make something good, it has the opportunity to be seen. I don’t think YouTube will lose that, even amidst curation.
Paddy: Yeah, those aren’t mutually exclusive.
Samir: Yeah, I don’t think they’re mutually exclusive. I think it’s fine. You know, Spotify has editorial curation, and I think that’s entirely different. That’s editorial.
Colin: A lot of editorial, yeah.
Samir: But I don’t think it’s mutually exclusive.
Paddy: Kind of goes back to almost like the thing we talk about with shows versus individual videos. They don’t have to be mutually exclusive. Both can work in the future. But maybe historically, only one has worked—which is individual videos. And we’re entering that new dawn.
Colin: Well, Paddy, thank you for coming on. I love that this is an annual thing. Good to have you back. The only prediction that I feel like came true from last year is that we all still do YouTube, which is great. It’s still a thing. People still watch it. It’s getting bigger and bigger.
Paddy: Yep. More people are creating for YouTube.
Samir: Hopefully this continues to be an annual thing and we don’t get all replaced in the next year.
Colin: [laughter] Well, that’s a good point. All right, see you.
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