Welcome to Creator Talks, the newsletter for ambitious and overwhelmed creators. Before I get into the things, I want to say a big congrats to the winners at the bCreator Awards, especially Brown Girl Bookshelf who won Book Creator of the Year (the category I was judging!) Congrats! So well deserved! 💛

Collaborations - you can now add a “collaborator” to YouTube videos (shorts and long form). This doesn’t work entirely in the same way a collab post on Instagram works in that it doesn’t also show up on the other person’s channel. The channel that uploads it is the owner, the video appears on their channel only, they can see the analytics and earn revenue from the video. You can add up to five channels as collaborators and the supposed benefit is that YouTube will aim to recommend the video to the audiences of all the collaborators. As well as collaborating with other creators, this could also be a great tool if you have a second channel, or are thinking about starting one, to help to grow it and move some of your existing audience over.

Thumbnail AND Title A/B Testing - the feature we’ve all been waiting for! I have some questions though. YouTube lets you test three different title/thumbnail pairs and so gives you three results (percentage watch time of each pair). But myself and other creators have noticed that YouTube is mixing and matching titles and thumbnails. In theory, great, this is a feature we want so we can learn which is the best combo to use. But YouTube are still only giving us the results for each pair you set. Love it but a bit confusing. Personally, I have been testing title first - so I use the same thumbnail and three different titles - then once I get a good sense of which is the best performing title I stop the test and run that title with three different thumbnails. I find a get a much better sense of which combo is best, rather than seeing a result and not knowing if that was the winner because the title was best or the thumbnail was best. How have you been using this feature?

Dynamic Ads - we’re not going to be getting this for a while but YouTube did announce that it’s something they are working on. Dynamic ads (like how ads work on podcasts) but on YouTube! This means that when we do a sponsored video we don’t have to burn the sponsored segment into the actual video file. We can film a separate sponsored segment that you upload separately to the dynamic ads system and you can set it to run on your channel across your entire backlog of videos for however long the brand is paying/the campaign runs. I am very excited about the potential of this feature, making ads more relevant, being able to re-sell ad real estate, and maybe even use it to advertise our own projects and products?! But like with everything I have many questions:

• Will YouTube take a cut?
• Will it affect Adsense?
• Can we make ads for your own products?
• How much control will creators have?

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Thanks for reading!

Hannah

P.S. I offer 1:1 creator mentoring for creators wanting to get unstuck, get clear on your goals and priorities, avoid burnout, and plan for any kind of leave or breaks. I also offer Patreon strategy support. Everything that helps you feel like a well-rounded fulfilled creator! You can schedule in a free 30 minute discovery call here.

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