Massive drop in views on kid channels

[Crown]

I'm not sure if I've already posted this story or if someone else has, but I thought it was relevant:


Parents of YouTube's highest-earner Ryan Kaji, 7, who has made $22MILLION testing toys, may face investigation by the Federal Trade Commission for failing to declare paid sponsorships

Summary

• Ryan ToysReview, starring seven-year-old Ryan Kaji, has 21 million subscribers
• Kaji is worth $22million and the toy reviewing channel is run by his parents
• But the Federal Trade Commission has been handed a complaint over adverts
• It accuses the channel of not disclosing sponsorship of toys in his videos
• The account is run by his parents, Shion and Kieu-Loan Guan
• The family lives in Texas and one of their homes is a $995,000, six bedroom property
• Google - which owns YouTube and takes a 45 percent cut of ad revenue from influencers - has not commented on the complaint
• They say they follow advertising laws for 'the well-being of its viewers'
• The complaint says that even when they do label videos as ads, the disclaimer is not obvious enough for children to understand

Apparently, this isn't clear enough:

Full story:

YouTube's highest earner Ryan Kaji may face investigation over adverts

Ryan Kaji is the star of Ryan ToysReview channel, which has 21 million subscribers, and sees him unbox and play with toys which he then reviews.

www.dailymail.co.uk

 

[FamilyToyReview]

I'm not sure if I've already posted this story or if someone else has, but I thought it was relevant:


Parents of YouTube's highest-earner Ryan Kaji, 7, who has made $22MILLION testing toys, may face investigation by the Federal Trade Commission for failing to declare paid sponsorships

Summary

• Ryan ToysReview, starring seven-year-old Ryan Kaji, has 21 million subscribers
• Kaji is worth $22million and the toy reviewing channel is run by his parents
• But the Federal Trade Commission has been handed a complaint over adverts
• It accuses the channel of not disclosing sponsorship of toys in his videos
• The account is run by his parents, Shion and Kieu-Loan Guan
• The family lives in Texas and one of their homes is a $995,000, six bedroom property
• Google - which owns YouTube and takes a 45 percent cut of ad revenue from influencers - has not commented on the complaint
• They say they follow advertising laws for 'the well-being of its viewers'
• The complaint says that even when they do label videos as ads, the disclaimer is not obvious enough for children to understand

Apparently, this isn't clear enough:

Full story:

YouTube's highest earner Ryan Kaji may face investigation over adverts

Ryan Kaji is the star of Ryan ToysReview channel, which has 21 million subscribers, and sees him unbox and play with toys which he then reviews.

www.dailymail.co.uk

Yeah I read the original complaint from TINA organization and it had list of offending links. Many of the links did have "advertisement" announcements, but they were not satisfied with the length of the audio announcement. And thats how they came up with a ludicrous number that 90% of their videos did not have sponsorship disclaimers (when many of the videos did). If anything the law is probably not clear on how to announce sponsorships since I never saw anything about length of disclaimer in any of the marketing materials I received from toy companies. They would say it should be done in the first minute of the video or something, but not how long the announcement needs to be. A lot of misleading information, and it gets more distorted as the media spits out slightly different version of the complaint. I didn't check all of the links though and I don't know if Ryans Toy Review violated COPPA in other videos. It's possible there could be a couple videos extremely lacking disclaimer. But the ones I saw looked ok and should not have been included in the complaint like the chuck e cheese one in this post. I think they're just out to get Google and silicon valley and its the perfect storm to garner support for this agenda.

 

[FamilyToyReview]

Here's an interesting stat : 19 of my top 25 videos in real time views were all made 2105 and lower, all the way down to 2010 ...despite having created about 1000 new videos since 2015 ...with all custom thumbs, all optimized and all HD, yet these old videos are the ones on top...its crazy.

What have you noticed in your suggested views report? I lost most of the big channels that used to send me views. except for one channel and I am starting to get more views from them again. aside from that, i noticed I was getting a tremendous amount of views from international channels. the algorithm change severed my connection to a lot of american channels, but left the international ones. weird.

 

[Redterrors]

Happy to.

That is absolutely fascinating. The algorithm is beyond messed up. We need Google to move the engineers in charge of the Sensorvault to the Youtube algorithm department.

 

[Andrewcu]

That is absolutely fascinating. The algorithm is beyond messed up. We need Google to move the engineers in charge of the Sensorvault to the Youtube algorithm department.

Lol yeah, that would have to be an improvement.

But would you believe it, my video finally got into the algorithm last night! I waited 24 hours to be sure, but it seems pretty set now. 65% of views from suggested in the last hour (and similar for the last day). Thank goodness. But hard to believe it took a fortnight when the analytics were great from the beginning. The algorithm has certainly changed recently.

Cheers for your replies and interest though.

 

[dv2000]

Youtube is owned by a US corporation and thus US law controls. Other countries are irrelevant and the majority of advertising money is designed for the US particularly with toys. Nothing will backfire because the problem is already here. Youtube has killed off the under 13 geared channels. No one is getting good views on new videos. Those old video views will eventually die off and all of the channels will be dead. Youtube is telling a massive lie to kid creators as there is some type of filter that is artificially decreasing impression click thru rate and thus resulting in fewer impressions for new videos. This can be proven by purchasing a display ad through google. You can pay to have your video thumbnail shown next to an older popular kid video still getting views. It says ad but to kids they can't really tell the difference and you see what kind of click rate you get. That same thumbnail that Youtube claims was clicked 10% of the time under organic is now up to 30-40% click rate. This is obvious proof that Youtube has an artificial impression filter designed to hurt new kid videos from being successful on the platform. Now this is something they can 100% legally do, but they need to be honest about it. If your channel relies on suggested video and home screen impression suggestion, your channel will be dead very soon. High quality nursery rhyme channels and name brand channels like PBS Kids and Disney will survive because parents manually search for those videos and then hand the device to their kids. Channels that make content geared for 8 and above might survive because those kids can manually search for your channel. If you make content for the 3-7 age range, you are absolute toast.

The only thing I can confirm if your video is not in yt kids app it won’t be suggested

 

[dv2000]

I have a 13 day old video with excellent analytics (for me anyway). 98% retention rate and 2 minutes (out of 2:02) average watch time. 25% click through rate.

It has received 30k views, most from an end screen of another video, and less than 5% from suggested. My most successful videos all have the vast majority of their views from suggested.

I can't understand why it hasn't been more successful. It has better key analytics than literally any other video of mine, tens of which have over a million views.

I thought it was a sure thing when I uploaded it but it's not to be. By the way, each individual video is a big deal to me as I only release less than one a month on average (stop motion is time consuming).

I'm just baffled as to why it isn't getting 'in the algorithm'. I've just changed the title - maybe that will help.

Too short. So overall watch time it accumulates is too low

 

[dv2000]

Lol yeah, that would have to be an improvement.

But would you believe it, my video finally got into the algorithm last night! I waited 24 hours to be sure, but it seems pretty set now. 65% of views from suggested in the last hour (and similar for the last day). Thank goodness. But hard to believe it took a fortnight when the analytics were great from the beginning. The algorithm has certainly changed recently.

Cheers for your replies and interest though.

It’s either they manually decide if it needs traffic or not and your video was queued, their algorithm takes its sweet time to process each video targeted at kids or video needs to be added to yt kids app

 

[Andrewcu]

Too short. So overall watch time it accumulates is too low

That a video needs to be long to be successful nowadays is a myth. It helps yes, but it's not necessary. I have several videos that are around 2 minutes or less which have millions of views from suggested.

I think that a 2 minute video with 2 minutes average watch time is probably going to be suggested a lot more than a 10 minute video with 3 minutes average watch time. However a 10 minute video with 6 minutes average watch time would probably beat them both. It's the combination of watch time and retention rate that matters, with watch time being more important.

 

[Redterrors]

There appears to be a lot of evidence that the algorithm is prioritizing videos that at least claim to be educational. Ellie Sparkles main channel has been hit pretty hard but she has another channel called Toy Game Show with Ellie Sparkles. She does the same videos, but gives them names like, "Benson from Toy Story 4 Teaches Educational Video for Kids" or she throws Science Experiments in the title. Almost everything recommended has science experiment, educational, learning, or some type of buzz word in the title and description. A lot of big channels are creating new channels that start new with all educational content. The algorithm may not let a big previously established channel switch titles to "learn" and get rewarded for it unless you are Ryan Toysreview. It is quite silly when you think about how pathetic Youtube engineers are. Channels are just inserting stuff like Good student vs Bad student and doing the same type of content from the days of bad baby.