u/ECspezi

After 14 years on YT, I started a new channel on other language. Since I knew what I was doing, my start was very bright: first video got 500k views, second - also 500k. Third - 300k. Not bad for a channel that was created basically yesterday.

TLDR: Usually video performance follows strict logic, however this logic either changed or stopped working. I'm providing a lot of data and my observations to understand what I'm doing wrong.

I make videos about stories, that I made in various sandbox games. My videos consist of 100s of hours of footage, combined with fast-paced editing and engaging voiceover. In result: 40 to 70 minutes of content. It's really difficult to make these videos, usually taking me a month at my fastest.

And it was worth it with 500k per each. However good times ended. Now a technical part that I'm trying to understand.

As everyone on YouTube knows: viewer retention is King. High retention always means high views. But it seems like it changed recently.

My first video, that I uploaded on a completely fresh channel created 1 day before, ended up with these stats:
539k of views, Average View Duration (AVD) of 10:43, Average Percentage Viewed of 18.5%. Video's length: 57:50.

My second video: 511K, AVD of 13:26, APV of 23.2%. Length: 58:03.
Third video: 311K, AVD of 11:08, APV of 25.3%. Length: 44:04.

These are not like "top notch" stats, I could do and done better, but can't really complain with these views huh?

Then comes 4-th video, which started all this.
Fourth video: 27K, AVD 15:41, APV: 20.4%. Length of 1:16:40.

From the first day, and after 2 months after publishing, it just refused to get any views. 14 years on youtube taught me: if video isn't getting views, means you messed up. And I did: after reviewing it for a lot of times I found out that it was really not my best video. Not that bad, but not really good either. Deserved low views.

Fifth video I published 9 days ago. And it is acting very weird.

So far it got 9k views, 16:25 AVD, 31% APV. So, retention-speaking it's my best on this channel. And I know why: after my mistake with 4-th video I made this one as best as I could. I expected to get my usually high views back, but in terms of views this one is even worse than my worst video.

Now we need charts to understand what I'm talking about. https://imgur.com/a/osb8Wmi

Screenshots 1-4 is a comparison chart you can find in Advanced Mode. It can compare videos in time after release, which is important, because my videos are long-living and getting views for years after publishing. On these charts we see only data about the same time after release.

Blue is my last video, purple is video in comparison.
Chart 1: Comparison of my 5-th video and my 2-nd video's AVD after a week. We can see, that new video is far superior.
Chart 2: 5th vs 2nd APV's.
Chart 3: is their CTR. It's about the same, so bad CTR is not the reason.

Not the reason why Chart 4 shows 2.5 times difference in Impressions between these. So, new video is better retaining viewers and don't have issues with CTR. And yet it's not getting impressions.

And the Chart 5 is the weirdest. Those who looked at their stats long enough knows: Suggested Videos are usually 10-20% of the traffic. However on my last video it's the king. I viewed the same chart for all my videos on all my channels last 5 years, and I found not even one day, when Suggested Videos was higher than Browsing Features on any of them.

FYI: Browsing features usually means Main Page, Suggested Videos are the videos from the right when you're already watching some other video.

Also, consistency. Yes, consistent upload schedule is better than non-consistent. However practice says it's not as important as looks. My first video that got 500k and my second video that got 500k was 1 year apart. My third video I uploaded month after second, and it performed worse, even though way less time passed.

Theme of the videos: my videos are all about different games. 5 videos - 5 new games. First video - is the video about niche game. Second - game was moderately popluar. Third - nobody knows about that game. Last (5-th) - the game is very popular. So, game popularity itself has to do nothing with this.

So, FINALLY MY QUESTION.

How is that possible, that video that on the same time frame beats my previous best video - just dies so bad in terms of views. Statistically speaking my first ever video on a new channel in a new language, that was way worse than my last one, that was published on a completely fresh channel - beats my last video in impressions at the first week time frame. Why my suggested videos source higher than browsing features, how is that possible?

It's my first time in 15 years, when I'm looking at my stats and don't see any logic, but see complete random. Please someone help me sort this out. Thank you in advance!