BREAKING: YouTube Just Announced 12 Huge Changes

Speaker 1 There is something that happens when you get in a room with the right people that just cannot be replicated by a course, a podcast or a live stream. The energy shifts, the excuses fall away and you leave with a level of clarity and momentum that you couldn't create on your own. The Think Media mastermind is that room. It's a live in person 2 day event in Las Vegas. It's small by design, intensive, and by application only because we make sure the room is stacked with incredible creators and business owners. If you're serious about using YouTube to build your business or grow your side income, stop waiting and go apply right now at Think Media mastermind.com. All right, let's dive into today's podcast. Speaker 2 YouTube just announced some major changes that will affect how to get views on YouTube going forward, how you actually make money, and some new opportunities as well as the future of the platform. But there's a lot of announcements that have creators seriously concerned and we need to talk about those now. We're going to be covering the 12 biggest updates, but this is coming from the recent event called Made in YouTube that is hosted in New York City and CEO Neil Mohan opened up with a big number. More than 3000 updates to YouTube have actually happened since the start of the year. They covered about 35 on stage and most of those updates aren't actually going to change your channel, but some of them are going to change it a lot. 1 of the biggest ones is the fact that soon you'll be able to test different versions of your actual video. However, some creators are raising some serious concerns about this that we need to discuss. Now, one of these changes is already inside of your YouTube studio, and you probably don't know it yet. And if you're not using it, then you're leaving views on the table. And then one could give you a new way to get paid from videos that you've already made. So I went through the keynote, YouTube's blog, the reporting from journalists, all these different sources, and I'm compressing about 10 hours of research into the 12 biggest updates for you. So here's the need to know information right here, right now. Let's first talk about what's going to affect you if you're a business owner or creator that wants to get more views and the first one is AB video testing. Now this is crazy because for a while now you've been able to split test or AB test titles and thumbnails. So instead of just uploading a video with one title 1 thumbnail, you can now upload a combination or package a combination of three different thumbnails that YouTube would test to see which one gets the most watch time and gets the most clicks combined. Right? Well, now rolling out beginning in 2027 for select creators, YouTube is going to start letting creators test up to three cuts of their video. And so for years, YouTube has lets you test the packaging of your video now with titles and thumbnails. But now you can actually test the video itself. So here's the facts. You can test up to three cuts of the same video. The versions can differ like a different intro, a different hook, a different structure. And reportedly, YouTube will distribute the cuts to different viewers and then judge the performance by watch time. And so according to reporting from The Verge following the YouTube event, they said you can pick the winner yourself. And if you don't, YouTube will automatically make the winning version permanent after seven days. They also said that versions can't be dramatically different. And that's where some of the skepticism of this has come in. Like, wait a minute, Could I just upload entirely different videos? I guess the big idea is that in a simple sense, and what what I think is actually relevant for a lot of creators is you might think about how you open your video and you're like, man, this hook could be really powerful, but so could this one. You just shoot two different hooks. All of the rest of the edit is the same. You export two different video files and you drop both of those into test. Well, those are minor differences. What would be crazy is if like 1 version of your video was 10 minutes and 1 was two hours. And it would seem, according to the report, reporting from The Verge, that, you know, they can't be dramatically different. Now, the published press reports that this is starting next year. And a question that kind of came out is, is this going to be for both Shorts and long form? TechCrunch said that for sure this is for Shorts. And so once this gets updated on YouTube's help center page, we'll know both. But the way it was presented was full long form videos. The presentation itself on stage was showing cut A and cut B of a long form video. And here's kind of some screenshots of what it could look like. Imagine having your main video cut B, cut C, and then your main video getting 38.8% of the watch timeshare. Furthermore, if you look on screen here, and if you're on audio, you might want to come to the video version of this episode, the comparison of where viewer retention is going up or going down is something that you could see after the fact in an advanced analytics view. And so this is a very fascinating update and this is where there's a lot of buzz now, you know, for smaller channels or you could say channels that don't get a lot of impressions, this might not be that big of a deal. Here's why is you just don't have enough data. Same thing for thumbnail split testing. You could use the feature upload 3 thumbnails, but if you're not getting enough impressions, it becomes inconclusive. But if you do have enough traffic and so medium to larger size channels, just like title split testing, just like thumbnail split testing, video split testing is a very interesting opportunity. Now M KB HD already commented on this, one of the largest craters on the platform. And he said, the more I think about it, the less I like it and asking questions like, will viewers know they're watching a video that's being tested? When you read the comments, how do you know which version the person watched? And I suppose that's if there was distinctly different content in the video. Maybe somebody comments about a particular part and then that comments not even relevant to the final winning video that lives on YouTube forever. If there's time stamps in the video, are they all messed up? Do you have to do different sets of time stamps? Let me know if you're feeling stressed by this update. In one sense, you're like, is it an opportunity or a burden? I'm not sure. And then how long after publishing can the creator keep testing? Right now we can test thumbnails in perpetuity. You can keep running new thumbnail tests. You could keep changing the title. If your video continues to get impressions and traffic on YouTube, you can continue to optimize it. And at times that actually might really raise the performance of the video 'cause you just keep testing different versions of the video. These are some real unanswered questions, and YouTube hasn't explained how that's all going to work yet. So that's number one of 12. Let's hit #2 And this is broken down into multiple parts. There's some new thumbnail tools. Now, we already know that thumbnails are very important because better packaging topic, title, thumbnail means more views on your videos. So thumbnail AB testing that's been live, you can test up to three thumbnails or titles or combinations. The winner is chosen by Watch Timeshare and they announced that creators have run more than 40 million tests since it launched in 2024. So the update was how embraced this feature has been, but the big announcement was what's called dynamic thumbnails. And you could see here it if dynamic thumbnails is turned on, it's matching thumbnails to viewer preferences. Here's the big idea. This isn't just thumbnail split testing. This is the idea that different thumbnails would be shown to different audiences. Now, if you watch Netflix, you've probably noticed that back when The Office was on Netflix, you you might see one thumbnail that has a picture of Dwight Schrute in it, another one that has Pam and Jim in it, and you saw these different variations. What's fascinating is it's maybe not just the one thumbnail if you were to click on The Office or Parks and Rec or your favorite show, but Netflix could be serving you different thumbnails because it actually gets your attention and you click on it based on what's seen in that thumbnail. So the idea of dynamic thumbnails is that AI, an algorithm, is actually showing different thumbnails to different audiences, increasing the overall performance of the entire video. Now the status is that's coming soon. The roll out timing is not specified. You upload 3 thumbnails and YouTube shows different ones to different types of viewers. There's no single winner. All three stay active. So I got a lot of questions about this, but it also could just be that if you were like some individuals have been doing already split testing thumbnails, there's just never a winner. They just all three work for you. And so it's the difference is it's not asking which thumbnail is best for everyone. That's what AB testing is. Dynamic thumbnails asks which thumbnail is best for this particular viewer. And you can maybe imagine that a younger audience might be more prone to crazy emotion or more bright colors or a different YouTube style that matches that demographic, where maybe an older, more mature audience might want a different type of thumbnail story developing. Now the next one is automatic thumbnail swap. And they're saying this is coming out later in 2026. So YouTube Studio, check this out can proactively identify underperforming thumbnails and help refresh or test replacements. So YouTube Studio, if you haven't started playing with it, I encourage you to start using it. This is the icon that's, you know, built in. Sometimes it's underneath videos, sometimes it's in the upper right hand corner. If you log into the back end of your YouTube studio, you can see what's called Ask Studio. That's what I want you to play with is talking to YouTube about your channel. And you might say, how are my analytics? What video is doing well and there's layers deep that you can go into Ask Studio. Well, the big idea here was if you were to ask Ask Studio to optimize your video thumbnails and then it would say something like, here are three videos with growing views that could perform even better with new thumbnails. And then the AI is saying you want me to refresh those and choose a a different thumbnail for those. And for a while now YouTube is generating will even generate thumbnails for you. There's some mixed results with that, but all of these things are improving. You can also add in thumbnails. So the idea is that we're moving into a world where you could say, hey, I want to optimize videos in my old library, and it's like, hey, these are a few videos that are underperforming. Want me to run some tests on them and run some different thumbnails on them? Now, as we continue to go through these updates, I feel like this is all exciting. It's all a picture of the future. It definitely shows us where YouTube is going. And in some cases, I think some of these features could be overrated, overwhelming. And you know, I'm curious your take. So let me know in the comments section if you have any feelings about that because, you know, how well is it going to work and what kind of issues will will there be? But that's a big announcement now. I just touched on it, but thumbnail generation is rolling out and is also already available to some individuals where a studio can generate long form video thumbnails based on the video's themes and your channel style and then lets you refine the colors in the layout conversationally, meaning prompt base. And I suppose you could use audio, right? Same idea, prompting. So you're talking to YouTube. OK, can you make this thumbnail based on this video? OK, can you change this? Can you change the colors? And we're going to get to an announcement later about that where that's coming to video editing, but thumbnail generation through Ask Studio, through the back end of your channel. The good news is, as you're learning these new features, this should make and could make content creation more accessible and more easy. You're uploading a video, it's helping you package it based on AI, based on the tools that they're giving creators. All right, those were just thumbnail distinctions. And now we're going into #3 of the 12 need to know updates, which is pre publish feedback. And so the idea here is you can upload a draft of your video. That's what you already do. So you upload a video to YouTube and you're in the back end optimizing it. Well before you make the video public you could start talking to ask studio about the video and it could give you feedback on oh your your script is a little off here. The hook sucks and here's some title ideas and here's some optimization ideas where you're conversationally talking about it in the background. So what you see on screen is you have a draft of your video and then it says feedback. Refine your video with actionable feedback based on your channel data. You click the little button, get feedback, you click the Ask Studio icon, get suggestions for your titles and thumbnails for the content itself. And so this is on desktop now, and it's coming soon to mobile. So this is a feature you can start playing with right now. Let me know if that's available on your back end. And So what you do is you select a draft, private or unlisted video and then ask Studio can give you feedback on the title structure, script pacing and other creative decisions before you publish. And I suppose if something major was happening, and this has happened to me a lot, you're like, shoot, I need to do another export, another cut. You know, you're watching back one of your videos, you're like, that title was wrong. Oops, I left in that repetitive line. And it can identify those things though, before you publish. And so Ask Studio is available on desktop web for eligible creators. And this will be coming soon to iPhone and Android #4 the AI agent for your back catalog. Now, this is my language and this has been announced, but the rollout timing has not been specified. So Ask Studios becoming more proactive instead of only answering questions. It can help you identify opportunities and work through different creator tasks. So why does this matter? Your library of videos is your biggest asset. You're back catalog. Now, if you're just starting YouTube at the end of this, I'll go through some actionable steps if you want to start or grow on YouTube right now. But one of the big ideas is building a library of videos on YouTube is one of the greatest media assets you could build in the modern world as a brand, as a business owner, as a personal brand, as anybody with a message. And So what can happen, though, as you build your library is keeping hundreds of older videos optimized is difficult to do by hand. And so YouTube wants AI. I'm calling it an AI agent. You know essentially what it is to help you optimize your back catalog so it can review your older videos and suggest fresh thumbnails so they reach new audiences. We just talked about that. It could build brand pitches using your channel's audience data. And this will be coming soon to the mobile studio app. And again, the thumbnail swap idea was there. Now, by the way, this is already mostly happening, but how sophisticated is this going to get? Like how sophisticated it there? The big theme on stage we heard at the keynote was Ask Studio, the AI interaction that's kind of coaching you and giving you feedback for your channel and helping you analyze data. This has existed for a while now. It's just getting better and more powered up #5 Insights and the new research tab. OK, so right now in your YouTube studio, your analytics are probably called Analytics. And the announcement appears to be that they're changing the name from Analytics to Insights. That's one thing. They're also going to change how it looks trying to organize the data for you in better and more intuitive ways to give you feedback so you can make more intelligent decisions. Now, one very specific update is that the research tab is changing. It's apparently going to still be called the research tab, but it's going to be a little bit different. Currently, the research tab has what people are looking for and it gives you keyword phrases and you can heart those, save those for later. You know, by the way, if some of this stuff, you're like, I didn't even know half of his stuff was in my back end studio. Like that's there right now, like you already have this. And so it also will say breakout videos, but the new research tab is changing and it's going to be, it would seem basically outlier based. Now we'll define what that means in a second, but it's going to be focusing on other videos watched by your viewers, other videos trending on the platform based on outlier score. And it looks like keyword phrases are going to be retired. So currently this is in the testing phase, but I believe it's rolling out soon. And so a couple facts. Analytics is being renamed insights. The trends tab becomes research, which shows videos from other channels that broke out. Now this matters because topic selection is one of the biggest levers of channel growth. I've been really saying lately that if you're really good at selecting topics on YouTube, you can be bad at everything else. Now, of course you want to approve at everything else, but topic is so important. Like if you're good at selecting topics, you could be worse at everything else. And of course, just talk about the right thing at the right time with the right title and you could get a lot more views than you've been currently getting. So by identifying essentially what an outlier is, and this is not a new thing, there's all kinds of softwares that do this for you, right? Platforms like Vid IQ and what they're doing is integrating like the outlier thinking right into YouTube itself. And what does outlier mean? It means videos that outperform a channel's typical videos. And the reason that's fascinating is because if a channel has 1000 subscribers and typically gets 100 views per video, but they post a video that gets 10,000 views, that is a massive outlier. And if you see that, a lot of times it's because of the topic or the way it was said or talking about the right thing at the right time. And you're like, oh, I should talk about that too. Or, or, or or like that packaging, that idea. Oh, I could not copy it, but do my version of that as well. So an outlier multiple like this is a 5X5X better than the channel's normal views, 10X better than the channel's normal views. That is going to start being integrated right into the new research tab that is rolling out. Another thing that in general better insights give us is the ability to spot patterns. If you want to be a successful content creator on YouTube, pattern recognition is one of the most important skill sets to develop. And so looking at data, looking at videos, looking at outliers, looking at your own content and being able to synthesize that information and spot patterns, that'll give you an edge. And so this tool is interesting for that. So then you can also filter videos based on what your own viewers watched. Now this has already been being tested with a limited group since July. And if you if you currently see analytics and trends. Then you don't have it yet. And actually, disclaimer, I've noticed in my back end, the research tab apparently on one of our channels just went away. It was there before. Now I just see trends. At one point I had both and going forward, I believe my understanding is analytics becomes insights, trends becomes research. If you're as confused as me, I'm doing my best to just synthesize this information for you. And side note, disclaimer, alert, saved keywords, if you were using those, remember we looked at this where you could heart your your keywords and the topics people were looking for is going to go away. So if you want to export those for future video ideas you have, you have three months to download them as a CSV. And again, this is not the same as the old research tab which came out in 2022 and that showed what people searched for. The new one shows which videos broke out. Number six, and if you are grateful for the level of research time and brain damage that went into me just trying to consume all this information, can you share this video and hit the like button? I appreciate it. Number six, ask YouTube AI answers. So what does this mean? A couple things, videos that answer questions clearly get found and videos that ramble get skipped. That's the big idea. And what they're saying is that Ask YouTube has some updates to it. Now. There's a couple layers to this. The first one is the ask button on a video. This has existed for a while, but you don't always see it. Sometimes you do, sometimes you don't. It's live now and select videos. They're testing it. They continue to test it. Now, this has already existed, but let's just define what this one is. You can use ask like again. If you're listening on audio, you're like, what's he talking about? Watch the YouTube version 'cause I'm sharing his screen. But what you see is there's the like button, the dislike button, the share button, and there's an ask button. The same idea of kind of ask Studio, Ask YouTube. And this sort of star icon they have is what's showing you what to click, OK. And when you click that, you can ask questions about the video. Now, this works on phone, computer and TV. And YouTube demonstrated that it can search comments, understand what's on screen, give you time stamps. You could say, can you give me a summary of this video? Is there any pictures in this video? Now, already 140 million people have used Ask YouTube in June, which was up from 20 million people in December. So that's a massive adoption of this feature. Now my understanding is that 2.7 billion maybe monthly active users use YouTube. So it's still kind of a small fraction when you put these things in perspective, but it takes time for these features to be adopted and and rolled out. OK, That's the idea that you can click ask, interact with the video, point me to a place, does the person have any demonstration of the camera? Is there any photos in there, etcetera. OK. But this is what's different is ask in search. So YouTube began rolling out conversational Ask YouTube search to mobile in the US on August 12th alongside desktop and TV. It's still limited to AUS English roll out and it's gradually expanding. Now we need to dive into what this is because it's pretty wild. So ask YouTube, you ask it a question and then you get an AI answer with clips from many different creators starting right at the moment of the question. So this is fascinating. You might say something like I need a new camera that I could easily take around the city when I'm out with friends. What vibes should I consider? YouTube could pull a window together of lots of different videos, but also you don't have to like click the video and like, hey, guys, welcome back. It could take you to the moments of the video that start talking about that answer. So if you see on screen ask YouTube, you ask about the camera on it starts building this live demo here started showing then that it pulls together sort of like a different experiential screen and kind of turns it into some text choosing your camera vibe compact, retro and versatile. It gives you some different videos that you could click on with answers to that question. But then you could ask a follow up question and you might say, well, I want one that I can take around the city or in the video, you know, is there, does it have a flash on it? Which out of this video of maybe somebody reviewing multiple cameras, which one did she ultimately rate the highest? And so you're starting with the prompt, AI is responding, it's aggregating videos, you're now going into videos and the search is staying with you, the conversation is staying with you. And then you keep talking about even that specific video, clickable product tags could show up on screen. And it's quite an interesting evolution. Now, what's fascinating is for creators, this probably raises some yellow and red flags because on the one hand, this is an opportunity for discovery, which is cool because if you're making good optimized clear videos. And that's why one of my big ideas at the top was if you're just kind of rambling and disorganized, then AI is not going to know how to index you or or recommend you, let alone humans probably won't want to follow that content. But if you answer questions clearly and you organize your content well, then you can start getting indexed by AI and recommended by AI. So there's some new discovery opportunities here. I think though, that secondly, there might be some red flags where you might people just watch the snippet of your video, but then they end up on somebody else's video. And if you make money, let's say, with affiliate marketing, in the picture on screen, there's actually a clickable shoppable link, which I imagine would probably go to this creator's affiliate program, which is cool. But then I wonder, what if YouTube cut out the creator? What if they, you know, showed you a clip of this video and a clip of this video. And then the creator's like, oh, that's the the viewer is like, that's so awesome. OK, I think that's the camera I want. And YouTube's like, well, here's your link because it didn't happen on the creator's video. It happened in the AI search. Who gets the affiliate Commission? Interesting questions that we could ask as this is rolling out number seven custom feeds. Now, some of these important announcements and there's a lot more that have to do with the viewer experience. But as a creator or an intelligent entrepreneur that's making content, you want to know how the platform's working so it can inform your strategy. And so one of the biggest updates about what viewers can do. And plus, you're also, I'm sure, a viewer and consumer of YouTube like me to learn to grow as well As for entertainment. You can now make custom feeds. And so pretty simple, but the idea is that you can basically build a feed beyond your homepage. You might create something. And the example here is late night ASMR and rain soundscapes. It's a feed for this particular experience of your day that you like. And maybe you get in front of your TV, you want to go to a custom feed. I'm assuming you'll be able to do this on TV, but definitely on desktop. What you're doing is you're going to say new custom feed and then you describe it. Here's another one. Maybe you have a commute. So you you type in witty podcast for my 30 minute commute. And so this is rolling out in the fall of 2026 viewers type of prompt like home remodeling tips and they get a saved home page that keeps updating. So you're sort of just selecting the theme of the custom topic or category that you want, but then it's now continuing to update for you. So you can always check in with that hobby with that interest. And so viewers can build highly specific interest feeds that may increase the value of making content on a clear topic. Now This Is Us only on web, mobile and TV. No word on other countries yet. Next short series. This is rolling out globally now. And this is different than a playlist series has been a big topic on YouTube in general. The idea you could do a show, the idea of this is it is kind of more like a Netflix experience more for those that are going to do episodic content and entertainment. However, I think there's some relevance for business creators here, but the idea is that you can do it with shorts as well. So you can organize your shorts into a series with seasons and episodes, custom thumbnails, so they playback to back. And part of this is because micro drama watch time rose 50% year over year and TV viewers of micro dramas rose 90%. This is the idea of people making kind of entertainment, episodic based short digestible vertical videos and people are in love with them. So from a content creator entertainment standpoint, this is fascinating for building out a whole series on shorts. However, a business owner could turn a topic into a native short series. In fact, I think that's probably incredibly underrated. Not clips cut from long videos, but like intentional vertical videos. I actually did that recently. It's called the 21 day YouTube reset. I fell off on day 13 and so I plan on finishing it. But I was uploading those as YouTube shorts on my channel, the Think Media podcast. Which side note, if you haven't heard about that, I'll link that up in the show notes and we post weekly podcast, help you grow and get views on YouTube, interview experts and a must listen to podcasts in your rotation or on YouTube. But I uploaded on that Channel a series of shorts that were natively built, not clips from videos, intentional crafted shorts. And I'll teach on that another time. In fact, that's a good reason to subscribe to that Channel. I have tons of insights, how I use a related video feature, how many views it led to different things that were accomplished by it, all kinds of unpredictable discoveries that I I couldn't have really predicted without doing it. So I do think that in embracing shorts, embracing native shorts, meaning custom videos, not I think that sometimes it's overrated to just cut clips out of videos like like low effort garbage shorts. That's overrated. I think it's underrated to sit down and craft intentional vertical content. And I think there's a lot to learn. Entrepreneurs could learn a lot from what's happening with the micro dramas #9 brand deals. YouTube talked a lot about some business tools, meaning how you can make more money. And that includes YouTube shopping. And one of the big things was they're bringing more brand deals to creators. And so brand deals are one of the biggest revenue sources for some creators. YouTube isn't just allowing brand deals anymore. It's building a marketplace. There's a few announcements here, 9A YouTube creator partnerships, which is already live in 20 countries. This helps brands find you and it lets brands see your channel data. So this is brand deals coming to the back end of your YouTube channel 9 B one click brand access and paid boosts. This is already live. You can share a one click code so a brand can see your video's performance and pay to boost it. Now on our Think Media channel, we have been doing brand deals for years and this has already been happening where sometimes we'll do a brand deal and the brand will pay for ads on the video so it gets more views. You know, it's performing on its own organically. They want to add more views to it. So I don't know how different this is than that, but this is just easier. It's like making it simple for you to say, here's the link brand and they go, oh, cool. We we, we see how this video is doing. Oh yeah, we'd like to put money behind that video as well. And so boosts are not new. A brand boosting your video that was sponsored, but one click code makes it easier is my take away now. 9C Ask Studio pitch help. Currently you could ask Studio. Remember we talked about that earlier, AI talking to your back end of YouTube about your channel in a chat prompt like ChatGPT. It's the ChatGPT of YouTube. It's called Ask Studio and this will help you answer brand briefs, brand pitches and tailor your media kit to each brand, which again, side note, I think the power of that is it's integrated into the data of your channel. That actually is the power of it. I'm sure it's probably powered by Gemini, but a lot of the LLMSII would hope you're using AI to help you write brand emails or brand pitches or help you build your media kits. But the idea is that YouTube themselves, which are, they're the best position to do it because they have access to everything, all the demographics, your channel, all the data, you can export that stuff, but that takes that's manual. So the bottom line is the AI behind YouTube, it's going to help you craft pitch brands, build media kits. Some of those features are already there now #9B is swappable sponsor segments, AKA dynamic brand segments. Now you might remember that. Doesn't this already exist or didn't it already get announced? And what happened with it? What you could see on screen would be the idea that you go into your video, you select not just the mid roles 'cause you can go manually select the mid roles of where your ads play. But then you you click brand segments and you actually insert different ads, right? Different video clips that cut in. Hey, before we get back to the video. This video is brought to you by think media mastermind. We actually are hosting A2 day event in Vegas. If you want to come hang out and get really geeky by geeky about YouTube and and also, you know, talk about building a business around your channel, think media mastermind.com. I'll put that in the description as well. I mean, you know, shameless plug, but it's me thinking like, so that obviously that was just me organically saying that. But if that was like an insertable ad, what's crazy right is that you could insert a sponsor segment in up to 20 long form videos at once. You go back to old videos and insert a a sponsor segment, it actually gets crazier. You could change them based on region and have different call to action buttons. So OK, you make one video and then you insert different sponsor segments, but then you insert even different sponsor segments that play in the US versus Canada. And I mean, it starts getting kind of complex. I think you might see a theme. A lot of these features speak to how YouTube is like the at scale media platform for media companies or creators that have built like enough help and support to even do this level of granular detail. But it's a pretty big deal no matter who you are because older videos could potentially carry new sponsor segments over time. And the question is, when does this really roll out? It's already being tested. It was first announced on Made on YouTube 2025 last year and basically YouTube said it would turn videos into living assets that testing would start, which it did. Now a full year later, it's just still in testing, but they said it's continuing to test and evolve. And and when is it public? We're not sure. But what's new is that you can insert a sponsor segment into up to 20 long form videos at once, target by region and the building at a shelf with a call to action button. So you can imagine for like, you know, maybe somebody's talking about different makeup products that are distributed different ways in in different regions. Below that video is a shelf of the products. There's a click, there's a call to action button that pops up when the sponsor segment is there. And then the sponsor performance data shows up in YouTube Studio and can be shared by brands. Now, Digi Day called this potentially the most disruptive development in the creator economy for 2026 because it could change how sponsorships are priced and let channels sell their back library and their back catalog, like ATV Network sells ad time. So rather than your brand spot just being burned in forever and getting stale, you could update it. Well, you might be hearing about this for the first time. Or you're like, yeah, well, when the heck do we get it? Here's the big idea. It is. This is radical. And while we don't know the full rollout time, and while it could be frustrating to be like, well, when do I get it as a smaller channel or it's kind of, you know, when does this fully roll out? The thing I think we need to know is like the future. Money making opportunities on YouTube are abundant. This is the time to invest in learning YouTube and building your brand. You might have said, well, I wish I started 10 years ago and I could have more momentum. It feels like it's too late now. Well, the best time to plant a tree was 10 years ago, and the second best time to plant a tree is today. So start building your library so that you have a back catalog to sponsor because this development is potentially the most disruptive development in the creator economy. I don't think that's an underrated statement or an overrated statement. All right. And then also agency incentives. YouTube is investing. This is a lot hundreds of millions of dollars to reward agencies for bringing deals to creators. So as sometimes as much as it seems that sometimes YouTube is against small channels and against creators, YouTube needs creators to survive as a platform and some more advertising you, you know, follow the money. And even if that's it's not that they're not generous, but even if it's self-interest that they make more money for their shareholders, they still need creators to flourish. So they're creating new tools. The semantic algorithm, is what we're saying. Calling it is allowing new channels to get discovered. They're investing in brand deals. Take advantage of this opportunity. Don't allow cynicism to paralyze you. Go on offense and let's build your frickin channel together. All right #10 shopping in Amazon affiliates. This was not new. It's live now. It is a big deal because for a while, Google and Amazon weren't the best of friends. And it looks like they're healing their relationship. This also expanded to India and Brazil so that you can not just do YouTube shopping, which has been around forever, but also now with Amazon products and Amazon affiliates, which is what the, I'm guessing is it the world's biggest affiliate program? I mean, Amazon, is it the biggest e-commerce store, right? So it's a big integration. You can tag products and videos in our commissions. And one of their biggest things was just how well it's doing, how well it's growing, how much sales volume is happening. It is live in the US since summer, but it's coming to India and Brazil in the coming weeks. Tags can now switch to local stores for international viewers since September 23rd. Affiliate campaigns let Let's brands offer exclusive Commission rates and bonuses. That's new. So this is a few new things to that and something that I've got a lot of questions about. And we'll cover that in a separate episode and separate video #11 AI comet moderation. So this is testing and already there's some AI integration in the back end of your YouTube studio, but the big idea here is an opt in filter that learns what you delete, hide or allow and then starts doing it for you, cleans comments and builds trust to save time. You opt into it, so it means you do give it permission to do this. It'll be coming to your live chat as well, and no data was given about it now #12 And then I've got kind of three big takeaways for you and a few summaries of my thoughts of what this means so you can maximize your results on YouTube going forward. They announced conversational editing, and this is for YouTube, create the app and YouTube Shorts. And so it basically so far seems to be for Shorts only, But I think this is also a prediction and a picture of where things are going. You might not enjoy editing. You might not want to do it. The idea was that editing can just happen as a conversation. You upload all your raw, raw footage or your clips. And so you're like, all right, can you take all of these clips of me and then find a, a hip hop song and have whenever I change my outfit, have it hit the beat of the outfit change. Thanks so much. And let the video edit for you. And then you say, OK, that was great. Can you change this one thing so it's prompt based editing? The example on screen says reorder, trim and more. So this is coming early 2027. You're just describing your edit in plain words like find my best takes or trim with pauses or sync the cuts to the music. AI builds the first draft and you can refine it by editing by hand afterwards if you want. So what's really cool about this is it would save you time. I think. What's fascinating is just how much AI is going to continue to influence editing. I think what's also overrated as a video editor myself is that this is going to like eventually do everything for you and be super smart maybe. But I still think that editing, good editing is, is human. But there's the AI tools just save you so much time, having been an editor since 2003. Like, what are we talking about, Sean, how old are you? You know, the, the, the sheer amount of hours I would spend doing repetitive tasks is being radically cut down by AI. So this is cool, the fact that you can do conversational editing with YouTube Shorts, but I think it's also a picture of where things are going. This is obviously editing is one of the biggest production barriers and it edits with you basically not for you. And that'll be happening. And it was built on Gemini Omni, which is interesting. And that's kind of the back end of what's happening there. And so obviously you've got Google, you've got YouTube, you've got Gemini, you've got the AI. The whole thing is massively being YouTube as a platform is being changed by AI. And I don't mean the conversation around AI slop and final outputs of AI video. I think the bright side of AI, which would be the AI tools that help us save time, make smarter decisions, edit our videos. There's a couple honorable mentions like you'll be able to go live together ad studio on mobile, Cummings, some members only community stuff, likeness protection. Not only will you 2 be able to detect your voice, but it'll also be able to detect your face and you can manage if anybody's copying you or cloning you live auto dubbing and a few other things like that. Now I want to give you some of my big takeaways, but I did mention earlier that that we are hosting an event in Vegas. If you want to come and talk about YouTube and talk about how specifically to build your YouTube business, especially if you're an established creator, we're hosting A2 day event coming soon in Las Vegas. I'll put a link in the description, but you could go to thinkmediamastermind.com. Get around other ambitious creators. Iron sharpens iron. It's going to be a fun event. So that is think Media mastermind.com. If you want details about this, here's my takeaways. Here's the big picture Studio is moving from telling you what happened to helping you decide what to do next. Yeah, so analytics and insights often times tell us about what happened in the past. Some of these new announcements are going to give us better vision for the future. Outliers have existed on a lot of different third party softwares. YouTube is bringing those straight into the platform that can very much give you strategic insights on what to do next. And you could be one video away. We say that all the time. You're 1 video away from going viral. You're 1 video away from breaking out. You're 1 video away from getting that next client for your business. So it's cool that the YouTube studio on the back end is going to help you make better decisions. YouTube is also my kind of thinking here is a tool for every step of the creator journey. So if you think about it, they want to help you research, help you come up with ideas, help you create your video with even video editing, help you package your video, what title help you come up with thumbnails, write titles, split test those titles. You know, testing AB testing of those titles and those videos help the video get distributed, build community and we'd even cover some of the community features and give you ways to monetize, monetize. So while it's debatable or evolving that some of these steps are maybe good or bad, like how how good is it at that those steps? And I mentioned this earlier, but I think in some cases these announcements are very excited. In some cases they're overrated. In some cases, it, for a huge media company that has a lot of staff that can split test a bunch of different thumbnails, that's kind of helpful. I think for your average creator, you know, that complexity is the enemy of execution. If you get overwhelmed with too many things, you're just not even making videos anymore. You're using too much AI. Your brain is in a noodle, you know, not helpful. So all that to say is that YouTube is just really aiming to build tools for every step of the creator journey. That's what this looks like, and that's where this is going now. Maybe one of the biggest takeaways is there may be soon no single version of YouTube. What do I mean, people are making a custom homepage personalized to them. People are being shown customized thumbnails personalized to them. People are getting different versions of the video, I don't know, personalized for them. So personalization is one of the biggest words of 2026 and I think 2027 personalized algorithms YouTube. And side note, there already wasn't just one version of YouTube. Like is is YouTube's homepage 1 billboard of all the popular videos? No, YouTube has millions and billions of home pages. The homepage populates and pulls content based on your watch history, based on your preferences, based on your activities. There's not just one homepage, there's billions of them. What's weird is now, now the, the long tail of how much personalization is again, a little bit stressful, but different audiences might see different thumbnails, right? YouTube is personalizing the entire experience. Now what's interesting though, is let's talk about opportunity. We've been talking about what we we've coined kind of like the semantic algorithm, which just means meaning. And it's the fact that YouTube understands viewers better than ever. It understands content better than ever. So it now matches specific videos with specific people better than ever. So this is an opportunity for the business owner to get in front of their ideal clients. This is an opportunity for the small and new channel to create intelligent content to be matched with a very specific audience because of AI, Meaning AI can scan your content and understand your content and know what the script says and even know if there's a cat walking in the back of your video, it understands your video. YouTube is also understanding viewer behavior. Every piece of data you give YouTube when you make a custom feed and what you click on and what you're satisfied by, that's an opportunity. So YouTube feels crowded and it is. There's a lot of content creators. There's also a lot of people consuming content, and the algorithm is continuing to improve to match the right content with the right people. So that is an invitation for you to invest in your content strategy, make intelligent videos, and tap into the opportunity that exists right now. Now, there was also some really important announcements from stage, some statistics and data. And here's a couple to know. And these were updates 'cause these just happened. You know, this is breaking. YouTube is the number one streaming has is #1IN streaming watch time in the US for three years straight, according to Nielsen. So YouTube's the leading streamer. Still true. YouTube is the number one podcast platform for viewers in the US 600 million people plus watch live content every day on YouTube. 300 million people plus engage with posts every day on YouTube. And posts used to be called the community tab. Those are the photos you can upload. Those are the texts you upload. Those are the polls that you post. One of the announcements they also made is that posts are coming to television and television is already such a major aspect of YouTube, but it's also getting more integrated in mobile. So people being able to watch YouTube on their TV, but look at the comments and now engage with the comments or have a 2 screen experience. I know I used my Apple remote and I am watching a video and I'm opening up the comments through YouTube just with my Apple remote. Well, posts are coming to YouTube as well and posts are a big deal. 300 million people engage with posts every single day. Now. These are massive. The creator economy and the math behind the creator economy $60 billion plus was added to the USGDP in 2025 because of YouTube 540,000 full time equivalent jobs in the US. Like that doesn't mean that many people work at YouTube. It means how many people are making full time equivalent living from YouTube just in the US. And the international opportunity is real as well. So the size and growth of the money going into the creator economy is is massive. The key is then saying how can you position yourself, build your skills so you could tap into a piece of that pie for your ambitions on YouTube. 60% growth in brand deal shorts in 2025 S massive brand deals flowing into YouTube and sponsoring short form content as well as well as long form content and ask YouTube's blowing up YouTube shopping's blowing up. Here's my 3 big takeaways on this long episode. But I think we covered a lot and let's let's talk about it. Here we go. Number 13 big takeaways for creators and business owners who want to win on YouTube in 2027. Master the tools, the platform, and the craft. Master the tools, the platform and the craft. That's not a new message from us, but I want to call you back to the pursuit of mastery, the pursuit of excellence. I want to remind you that lifelong leaders are lifelong learners. And so new tools are coming out. Take a breath. You might need a break after this episode. You know, buy yourself a nice lunch, OK? You deserve 1/3 cup of coffee today. All right, Like do that because, I mean, I was like stressed, listen to this. I was like, how am I going to explain all this in less than an hour? And we're on track to do that. So master the tools. Take some time to learn these. Play with these cause those who keep learning the tools are are going to dominate master the platform, keep learning the platform and then also master the craft. And I think this is an interesting concept is tools can only go so far. Tools are not enough. You need tools and taste like if we get too analytical about all this stuff and I'll just freaking split testing and whatnot that makes me want to pull my hair out. It's like this is also like take a breath like this is art y'all. Like let's slow down a little bit. And I think that we could get very polarized about this, like all or nothing, split thinking, black and white thinking. No, I mean, it's tools and taste. These tools are cool. Learn the tools, pace yourself though, but also develop that taste. Be a human, inject that authenticity. Cultivate your taste, cultivate your unique voice. And so master the tools, the platform in the craft. Any Craftsman masters the tools, but the Craftsman also needs to be an artist. Tools and taste and keep learning. You know, there's a book called the Lean startup. Eric Reid said this. The only way to win is to learn faster than anyone else. So I'm sorry if you feel a little bit overwhelmed, but if you want to be in the game and the game is good like this is an amazing opportunity. YouTube getting paid from the platform. More brand deals. What we talk about is the YouTube Business Bridge. Getting views, leads and sales with fierce clarity and building your business and getting clients from YouTube. This is the opportunity in front of us, but the only way to win is to learn faster than anyone else. Number 23 big action items and takeaways for creators and business owners #2 Your video library is your greatest asset. Your video library is your greatest asset. We have been sharing for years in our Video Ranking Academy community that the goal on YouTube is to build a library of ranked videos that get views 24/7. That's still true today. And even as SEO has evolved and search has evolved, it's still true. A ranked video is just a video that you post today that keeps getting views for weeks, months, and years to come. I don't care if those views come from search. I don't care if those views come from Google. I don't care if those views come from homepage recommendations, like if you have a library of videos that get views 24/7, you've built a real media asset. Building your brand on YouTube is the best place to build your brand. An investment in YouTube is an investment in the future and an investment in greater awareness of your message, your mission. And so that's always been one of the most valuable things a creator can build. The hard part was keeping your old videos optimized. So my take away here is the AI tools is like build a video library, but also embrace these new tools to optimize your old library. And don't just always think about posting the new videos. Think about building your catalog. It's it, it you, it you should be thinking like a musician, you know, in a way you could be thinking about, I'm building a catalog of music and my old music, my old albums have value and I can, you know, even re release those deluxe versions. Maybe I can't get my masters. So what do I do? I rerecord them like Taylor Swift, you know, like you're building up catalog and and now you could optimize swapping thumbnails on old videos and maybe a dead video gets revived, going back in old videos with AI. And so AI is starting to do that for you. And then lastly, start now, whether you feel plateaued and stuck, you know, again, have a fourth coffee on me and and then start now. Like if YouTube's starting to feel overwhelming, I get it. But again, every video you post is, is an investment in an asset, your brand, your personal brand. So if you feel stuck, keep going. If you're plateaued, reinvent yourself, relearn and keep going. And if you're starting from scratch, like The thing is like the pain of, of discipline, I think is not as bad as the pain of regret. If you've been thinking about starting YouTube for the past five years, watching everybody else for the past seven years, like get off the sidelines and get in the game, is that a guarantee of the results you're gonna get? No, but it is guaranteed that you'll never have known, and you might experience the pain of regret if you don't even try. And when you start now, you begin looking back, you'll be like, thank God. I watched that video with Sean Cannell from Think Media, and I decided to start. Start before you're ready. Start in the midst of how overwhelming it is start. You know, we could have one mindset. It's it's too much to learn. Or we could have the mindset of I'm just going to learn a little bit each day. Let's get it's too hard now or no, there's a lot more opportunity now. And some people are a lot of people are going to think that. So I'm going to be one of the ones that just posts and gets 1% better with every single upload. Now I want to read to you some of the final words from Neil Mohan as we land the plane today, because I think it kind of puts a bow on this episode and this major announcement. But before we cover that, a couple things. One, if you're able to comment on the video, I'm curious what's your biggest take away? What's your biggest question? What's your biggest fear? If you're listening on audio, you can always rate a review on Apple or Spotify. And and if you want to really take your YouTube channel to the next level, we are hosting A2 day event in Las Vegas. It's called the Think Media mastermind.com, all about YouTube strategy, how to get views, but also how to really build the business around your YouTube channel. And then it's all about the community networking, connecting with other creators and business owners that are serious about YouTube. So check a summary of resources in the YouTube description or the podcast show notes, or just go straight to Think Media mastermind.com. But here's what Neil said at the end. He said. I started today talking about our mission to build the best home for creators, which I think they're aiming for. I they want they're on a mission. It's cool to hear YouTube's mission, their mission is to build the best home for creators and our track record of staying one step ahead of how the world watches. And I think that's true too. Nothing else is like YouTube. Nothing else is comparing to YouTube. Nobody can keep up. Nobody has as good of tools. Nobody has as good of resources. It's I'm not just glazing YouTube. I'm not saying it's without problems. It that's just I actually would argue objectively true. It's I think the best home for creators and they are one step ahead of how the world watches. He goes on. This is the next chapter of innovation for YouTube era. This is the new YouTube and a lot of ways the old YouTube is gone, and that's painful in a lot of ways. I mean, I wish the old YouTube had come back. What the Frick is all this split testing now, like how many versions of videos we got to create? No, I get it. The old YouTube is gone, but it's up to you and it's up to me and it's up to the global community to embrace the new YouTube and to keep the heart and soul on YouTube and to not just have the tech, but also have the taste, right? And not just embrace the tools, but please keep the taste. And the next chapter of innovation for YouTube is here. Our momentum is only accelerating what's happening for the future of YouTube. Of course he's going to say that, you know, because he wants the stock price to go up. But no, I, I, I think that the few I've I've never been more excited about YouTube than I am now. I was talking to craters in an event recently. Same thing I've gone through. There's been seasons where I've been like kind of just grinding it out like future looks bright on YouTube. It's not without challenges, but he goes on. We're we're excited for the world to watch as we continue to push the boundaries of what's possible because the breakthrough tech, technology, the stories that inspire us, and the culture that moves our world will always be made on YouTube. Forgive me if I butchered parts of that, but basically the future looks bright. YouTube's going to continue to push the boundaries. Momentum is only growing. And that is what the math says, and that is what the projections of the creator economy says and the real math of the dollars that are there. Now, I get it. It could be overwhelming and it could feel like you're getting passed by or the algorithm's not seeing you. But let me encourage you, don't quit. Maybe rewatch this video, master the tools, learn the platform, work on your craft, keep your heart and artist soul. Build a library of videos and start now.