What Happens When You Turn Off Mid-Roll Ads?
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- čas přidán 28. 06. 2024
- For 2021, I’ve turned off mid-roll ads for my youtube videos. My hypothesis was that, if I turn mid-roll ads off, it will increase watch duration, watch percentage, and overall viewership. After a month and a half of testing, here are my results.
0:00 intro
1:06 today’s workout
1:28 channel type
2:00 assumptions
3:25 hypothesis
4:16 testing period
4:33 summary stats
6:03 caveats
6:49 control
8:39 effect on subpar video
11:37 effect on good video
14:02 effect on monthly metrics
18:12 refined hypothesis and next steps
Thanks for watching! Leave a comment to let me know you stopped by!
Running footage shot on:
GoPro Hero 9 Black (paid link)
amzn.to/3iWG8v9
Music sourced via Epidemic Sound www.epidemicsound.com/referra...
Disclosure: It's 2021, so I think we all know how affiliate links work at this point, but for regulatory compliance or affiliate program purposes, I must state that affiliate links do not increase cost to you, but:
"As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.”
Also, you do not need to use these links. You can also search for these same items in amazon or on any search engine/shopping site of your choice and buy/research them that way.
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strava: / strava
twitter: / wordofko
instagram: / kofuzi
etsy: www.etsy.com/shop/Kofuzi
subscriber count at time of upload: 70,092
end card music:
Jim Yosef - Checkered
/ jim-yosef-checkered - Sport
2:04 for a cute sneak attack!
FTW
Thank you for dropping mid roll ads. I personally switch out once they come in on any content I watch. You have just gained a new subscriber!
Mid-roll ads are annoying, but they are especially annoying when they cut in mid-sentence and completely disrupt the flow of the video.
Yup, poorly timed ads are like the bad old days of 8-track tapes. Yeah, I'm that old. But YT ought to give content creators the option to specify ad breaks that don't disrupt the flow.
I don’t mind the ads, I don’t watch them but I do let them run while I do something else. Hope that helps. That’s the least I can do for all that you do for us. Thanks for all the great reviews Kofuzi.
don't watch the ads if you don't want. life is too short
who are you helping do you think ? with what ?
Great video, thanks for the transparency. Here's some insight into my behavior, hope it helps.
1. Intro skipping - I skip your intros a lot, I skipped the intro to this video actually. Typically when I watch your videos, I'm watching for a particular informational reason. "I want to hear your opinion on this product" or "I want to learn more about this thing", etc. The intro doesn't serve a purpose for me. I think it's important to legitimize yourself as a runner so people who might not be subscribers know they can trust you, "I see him running with this product on, I know he tested it." "I see him running in a frozen tundra, he's a serious runner and I can trust his opinion." and the intros do a decent job of driving that home. But I've been a sub for a while so I already know that about you. If I contrast my behavior to when I watch Tinman Elite content - there I almost never skip the intro. The reason being is that their content is more experiential/entertainment rather than informative. Yes it's informative and that's great, but it's not the primary reason I click on their videos. When there's a new Tinman video, I'm in an "entertainment mode" - I might watch it on the TV or make sure I have a beverage before I watch. The intro for their videos is almost always the same, like a TV show. I think they have like two separate versions that they interchange between. I find myself humming along to the songs in their intros, it's part of the overall experience. For your videos, I watch because you've caught my eye with a particular product or topic, or because I'm actively researching a product and your video might be one of many that I'm watching so therefore I'm trying to take in as much information as fast as I can. I don't strictly use your video as a tool however. As I've become more invested in running myself, I've grown to become more invested in you. I subscribed when you put out the video about shutting down your business because I wanted to help, and now I'm more interested in your story and pulling for your success.
2. The way I consume content on your channel is kinda similar to the bodybuilder Greg Doucette. You guys are obviously very different but at a high level there's some decent overlap in your content in my opinion. Greg's videos almost always serve an informational purpose, I watch to "learn about a particular part of the body and how to work it out" or "Oooh that topic is particularly interesting for informational + entertainment purposes". Strategically, Greg knows that his videos are more evergreen. I don't get value out of every next video from his, I might if his next video is of interest to me. I get value out of his catalogue. If there's something I want to learn about, I often go back through his videos and search for what I'm trying to learn about. I did the same thing with you when I was researching Tracksmith gear. If when I'm looking for a new running watch, I will mostly likely start with your channel to see if you did a review of it. If so, I'll probably skip the intro ;) and then hear your thoughts on it.
I don't know if was helpful at all, maybe other viewers can chime in to talk about their watch behavior so you can get more data. Anyway, best of luck to you!
The ads are a pain, but don’t result in me turning off the video. Keep the ad revenue Mike, you deserve it!
Your analysis and honesty is incredibly insightful. Thank you! Love your work!
Hi Mike, I’m 66 years old and started running several years ago after raising and working to put 4 children thru college, so aside from that when I reentered the running seen and needed new day information I came to CZcams. I did not stumble onto your channel it presented itself to me and have been an avid fan ever since, I could go on for quit a while the reasons why but suffice it to say that Imho keep doing what your doing because for me your intros bring me back to my high and college running days in the 70s and your content tells me what I need to know now it’s obvious the amount of work and analyzation you put in to give us 12 or 17 min I’m so appreciative. Adds no prob grew up with 7 channels on tv plenty of commercials lol whatever helps you. Be well, be safe out there in the cold and I look forward to more kofuzi
thanks Thomas for the feedback. it reminds me of the time the internet went out at our house but the cable did not. the kids had to watch live tv, and they were mad when i wouldn't skip the "ads" during the commercial breaks.
@@kofuzi lol at some point in time we are “that guy”
We literally we're talking about this as a team last night. Amazing timing!
Thanks for all your support! Inspired by your running, I did my first ever snow run today. We’ve around 13 inches. Made it nearly an hour and wasn’t too slow. Yay! Though, (thankfully) its much warmer than where you run.
I don’t mind the mid roll ads, if they benefit you. I disregard anything they present.
70k+ subscribers and rising. Congratulations, Mike. Well earned.
Until the next milestone...
I have been wondering about this too. Thanks for talking about it.
Congrats on 70k btw road to 100k 💯
What a great subject to discuss and an honest approach. I really dislike mid-roll ads, so appreciate you avoiding them
I’ve stopped watching some other shoe reviewers livestreams when I’ve been on catch-up because of simply too many mid-roll ads becoming too frustrating
that's where this whole thing started for me. watching livestreams or podcasts where youtube inserts ads every 5-8 minutes is insane
I'm an outlier for 2 reasons - I have Premium and I came to your channel around the time you started this experiment, but good data!
Insightful! No problem with you keeping the mid-roll ads in. I do try to ‘make it all the way to the end of the video’ each and every time :)
I appreciate that. although, please always keep in mind that I think life is too short to watch videos you don't really want to. so, feel free to click away. getting people all the way to the end of the video is my responsibility, not the viewer's.
I would and will still watch / support your videos even with mid-roll ads!
thank you
I don’t mind if u had mid-roll ads. If ppl like u they will watch through it. I understand that it helps your revenue and am okay with that. Not entirely sure everyone else knows or feels this way.
Thank you so much for making this video. I don't really want ads in the middle of my videos but I tend to leave them in there and not adjust their position within the videos.
I think adjusting the position probably is worse than what youtube can do for us. I've also considered structuring videos so that I can have better control of the overall flow of a video when the ads do appear, kind of like scripting in an intentional break ("...I'll discuss more, after the break..."). but I think that would be really annoying to film.
@@kofuzi - I actually had one viewer tell me that I should go move an ad because it was breaking up part of an intro or something. It's something that I tend to just click ok, let google do it's thing and forget about. I think a little bit of placement might go a long way but I'm lazy.
Thanks for pulling back the curtain on some of this CZcams channel stuff. Much appreciated as I'm trying to learn how to navigate it.
I'm not an expert, but I'm hoping we can all learn from each other
Enjoyed this vlog and insight thanks Kofuzi. Mid role adds are not a problem for me when they only last that 5 seconds or so, to a max of a few per vlog.
Great insight on how a channel works
Congrats on the 70k subs, well deserved👍
Thanks Running Guy!
@@kofuzi thanks for this video, I also found a drop in January
@@kofuzi I also have a drop off at the beginning of my videos if I do a B-roll. In this weeks Vlog video I’ve put it in the middle. Will be interesting to see if it drops off there.
Thanks for the insight
Big picture I realize it does not matter much, but if I pick a CZcams video to watch, I will watch it to the end. I feel it is a small effort on my part to reward the CZcamsrs' effort to provide content.
I am the same way where I will watch all the way, although it does sometimes take me a couple sessions
Thx! I appreciate the insight into this process.
I usually let the 30 second ads roll but not the looooong ones.
sometimes I feel like youtube likes to really push it with the ads. like, if you accidentally let one ad roll for a bit, it will follow up with an even longer one next
@@kofuzi is there a metric for mid-roll ads to see what percentage of those are being watched versus skipped? And if a higher percentage of mid-roll ads are being watched does that change the monetization. A lot of variables in play.
Make the money man, don't overthink it, leave them on.
overthinking things is kind of my thing
Mgreat songs as always. Please make a Playlist!
I like the transparency, a lot of youtubers, at least in Slovakia, when you ask how much they make, they start being really deffensive, you are not afraid to show it, even though I get that its just from youtube
I like that you dont put the mid-roll ads in your videos, at the same time, when there is a mid roll ad in a video, I find myself often stopping the video at the ad, doing something else for a while, and then coming back to it
there used to be a very strong culture of secrecy around the money side of CZcams. there's a long-standing urban legend that it somehow violates the terms of service if you talk about this stuff.
@@kofuzi that's interesting, I didnt know that
I forget this guy is a businessman, he’s so down to earth
Good one, persevering to get evidence, Mike.
Very interesting and insightful. I'm not at 1k subs yet, so ads haven't entered my world yet! As a consumer, i'm not worried about ads - but most ads are irrelevant to me.
Big props to you for the insight in dropping mid-roll add. I find mid-roll ads a bit annoying and don’t include them. It makes me wonder if there is a tipping point in the size of a channel when mid-roll ads don’t reduce watch time, and even if they do, the cost-benefit moves further to the benefit end of the continuum.
I would guess that it wouldn't be so much the size of channel as the type of video. I would imagine that a mid-roll ad would have a different average effect on a review video vs a race video or vlog. I'm not sure which way it would effect things, but I would imagine that there could be some discernible differences
@@kofuzi For sure there are a lot of contributing variables. It seems to be as much art as it is science. Good vid! 👊🏼
Well done Mike! 70 Subs is AWESOME 👍🇨🇦. I love the ads! There are so many awesome products out there that I would never know about if it wasn't for the ads! That's just my take...LOL. Keep up the great content and for being such a nice and honest dude!!!
Did you get a new camera? Videos recently are looking good!. Even if not, camera are you using? Thanks, and keep up the videos, subscribed a while ago and really enjoy your content.
I got a new camera over the summer or maybe fall. I'm using a Sony a6100 with a sigma 16mm lens
Comparing November stats with January is hard due to advertisers are paying more during the holidays for their adds.
Very interesting stuff!! Do you think they count mid-roll ads as a monetized playback and that could be why that number decreased?
I hadn't considered that. an interesting observation.
It's so strange to see the trail I run on every single day with some awesome edits.
Very interesting video. I would probably suggest you need to hold out a couple more months to get some more reliable data.
Really enjoy these types of videos randomly mixed into your usual stuff!
One thing to consider about the end of the video drop off is that people are clicking your pop up video links. Would be interesting to have you link to an earlier or later link and see if there is a drop in that video and bump in the others. I'm thinking like linkin all the MAF videos for instance.
I think having Livestreams also helps habituate your viewers to log form videos like this 20mins plus one. Long enough for a treadmill Zwift 5K run!
Lovely 😊
Thanks David!
A few observations from a viewer's perspective (I've never monetized my videos, no idea or even interest in how CZcams's algorithms work):
1. I watch about 50% from my phone using the CZcams app, seeing all ads; and 50% from the PC with adblockers. Recently CZcams has flooded us with ads, sometimes an ad every minute or two on some channels. It's so intrusive I won't bother watching some videos at all. If it's a 2 minute video and there's an opening ad, 20 seconds of content, and another ad, I'm outta there and probably won't watch another video on that channel (that's like Facebook level intrusion). And unless it's a channel I've subscribed to (like yours), I don't hesitate to block ads because YT has gone way overboard. The worst are the content ripping channels that post nothing but short movie clips -- what's the point of sticking ads into a 45 second low rez clip from a VHS copy of an old public domain movie? But if it's a channel with original content that I subscribe to I'll try to watch via the phone app without blocking ads.
Until YT implements a reasonable interval for ads, preferably targeted to my interests, I'll block all ads on YT via the PC browser. I don't know how much control content creators have over this mess, but YT doesn't appear to be willing to reveal its ever-changing secret sauce and leaves creators hanging, while chasing away viewers.
*BTW, I just noticed AdBlock now enables selectively allowing some YT channel ads. So I've disabled AdBlock for your channel via my PC browser. Regarding midroll ads, go for it, probably won't dissuade me from watching.
2. I enjoy your approach to shoe reviews and training tips. That usual more leisurely length of 10-15 minutes is fine. Your presentation, editing, etc., make it work. As you've described about your unique job and presentation approach, it works for those running videos as well. Gives me time to watch things like footstrike angle, etc., to see if there's anything I can adapt to my own running (unlikely, since I'm 63 and slow, but, hey).
3. For consumer electronics reviews, I generally won't watch anything longer than 3-5 minutes. If it's a device that can be clearly demonstrated -- a 360 video camera, for example -- sure, I'll watch a longer video. But for earbuds and headphones, we can't actually hear them so a short review of 3-5 minutes seems about right. That's the same length I prefer for most exercise and physical fitness demo videos (the Bowflex channel is the best I've found for succinct demos of exercises that don't require Bowflex or any equipment).
4. With longer videos, I'll generally leave them running while doing stuff around the kitchen or whatever. I'm not watching every moment, but I might rewind to review something that caught my attention while listening. I'm sure other watchers do the same. That might explain the occasional bumps -- viewers rewinding to review a segment, maybe in slow motion.
Anyway, you're doing a fine job and the channel has evolved. I finally got motivated to resume running in November 2020 and check this channel several times a week. There aren't many YT channels that really review running shoes for runners. Most reviewers are doing lifestyle and fashion commentary.
I got CZcams Red so I don't have to watch ads and you can download anything you want. It's worth it in my opinion
Mid roll ads are often the point when I go somewhere else. The shorter the video the better, if the time stamp is over 15 minutes I'll often give it a miss.
After a year later do you have them on or off?
still off
@@kofuzi I do reactions and I notice drops offs but not where the mid roll ads are. So I have been debating doing them off or keeping them on.
I never see the ads with CZcams Premium. Most people who really dislike ads would surely pay for Premium IMO.
I've never tried premium
7:46 - I’ll admit I usually skip the intro. But that usually happens because I’ll have a set goal when watching that video, like say, a product review, I just want to get down to what you think of the product.
That being said, my suspicion is that every channel “suffers” from that to some extent if they have long intros, and it isn’t necessarily a bad thing.
Living with an adblocker feels like being literate in the middle ages :P
I’ve never really thought about as blockers. Is that similar to stealing cable back in the 90s or no?
Hey there, I was wondering if your channel isn’t monetized yet than can you turn off mid role ads? I have a meditation channel that isn’t monetized and CZcams is starting to put ads in there. This is obviously annoying to people trying to meditate. Any suggestions?
that would be a great question for CZcams support. I'm afraid I don't know the answer to that
@@kofuzi I don’t even see a clear way to contact CZcams about an issue like this. It seems like until your channel is monetized they can’t even be bothered. 😣
you forgot we talk about air fryers and corn fields!
I must be a weirdo as I watch every video from start to finish . On any channel it must be really crap for me to bounce it.
Which hat were you wearing in this video?
Do you receive payback for views with youtube premium?
You actually receive more money from people that watch your videos with premium enabled. I've seen that in my own analytics. There's ad payments and premium payments.
18:40 I finally found the answer lmfao
Lol
Dude, I never shut off the video I'm watching when a mid add pops up. I say keep them for your revenue. I don't think your viewers would be snotty at you for having them.
We're used to them
Definitely easy to get lost trying to analyze that type of data and account for the unknown variables that are impacting the final numbers. I wonder what % of your monthly data is generated by the Kofuzi crew that is established, and if most of the blips are not really video specific but caused by newcomers to your channel who are "feeling you out." Just an idea, that I know would prbly go against your better nature, but maybe make 1 'controversial' video per month and see how those numbers differ from your normal approach.
I don't know about making a controversial video necessarily, but I do think it's worth exploring some different formats
As a content creator, unless this is some altruistic project, you should want to get compensated for your time, effort, and creativity. If this is your only source of income and you are looking to grow your business, I would recommend *never* turning off Ad Revenue for a video over 8min
I think your advice is well intentioned, and I suspect that my explanations were not nuanced enough.
perhaps it may make more sense if we look at it in terms of reinvesting profits. let's say I owned a donut shop and could theoretically bring home $100 in profits. instead, what if I only took home $80 while putting $20 into making the donut shop a more enticing place for customers to return?
everyone hates ads ahaha
Your 1min B-roll intro is 30-40s too long IMHO.
i hear that frequently
I don't mind to see the ads. Please make more videos where you are running all the time. I am not interested on your earbuds videos. I like your training videos. If you get more money with the ads put them on.
since I'm training for a (virtual) race right now, there will be at least one weekly workout video per week.
or it could that CZcams is money sucking machine that does not care about art, it wants thousands ads in video and does not care finesse what you are searching.
btw what is the retention rate of this video?
I'm sure it's relatively quite low. any time I make a video longer than 15 minutes, it tends to struggle.