Three YouTube podcast results that blew my mind
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Now to this week’s article. Enjoy!
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Three YouTube podcast results that blew my mind
I’ve grown several YouTube channels now, the most recent of which have both achieved over 100,000 subscribers (hel-lo silver plaque!).
Each time, it’s a learning journey - no two audiences are the same, and different types of content require different strategies.
At the New Statesman there have been at least three turning-point moments when I’ve been surprised by how users are consuming our content. These have inspired our current approach, which involved placing the podcast at the centre of all our audio and video activities.
Here are those three moments, why they surprised me, and the impact they had on our decision to double down on the podcast as a video format as much as an audio one.
People love watching long-form conversations
When I started commissioning content for the New Statesman YouTube channel, it was independent of the podcast. We produced news clips, interviews and highly-produced location features. The content was great, but it wasn’t gaining the traction we hoped.
We experimented with different content types for a few months and one trend became clear.
I had been commissioning long-form interviews somewhat reluctantly. My background - and that of our excellent video producer, Phil - was in documentary. We expected that was what would appeal most to a New Statesman audience.
Our assumption at the time was: “who would want to watch a video of two people just talking?!”
But as it turned out, that was precisely the content that drew the biggest audience and delivered the longest watch time.
I was genuinely surprised.
As regular readers will know because I keep banging on about it, watch time is one of the strongest signals YouTube uses to determine whether it recommends a video to a wider audience.
So after a few more months proving the hypothesis that interview and discussion video performed best, we pivoted.
We were already making podcasts every week. Creating additional video separate from that was additional workload on our tiny team. Instead we focused on turning the podcast discussions into high-quality YouTube video.
We went all-in, kitting out our podcast studio to make it a fully hybrid video-audio broadcast studio. And it paid off.
Now the podcast forms the spine of all our audio-visual content, and is the primary growth driver on our YouTube channel.
YouTube audiences aren’t always young
For as long as I can remember, any time I’ve talked about creating content for YouTube people assume that we must tailor the content to a younger audience.
At the Telegraph I was asked to launch a couple of new YouTube channels “because we need to reach younger audiences”.
The Evening Standard worked on a similar assumption.
The New Statesman deals with some pretty cerebral content appealing to, let’s say, a more mature audience. When I tell people I meet, especially New Statesman readers, that we publish the podcast on YouTube they ask, “but how do you make it work for younger people?”
But here’s the thing: our audience on YouTube isn’t young. In fact our largest age demographic on YouTube is… get this… 65+
Actually our podcast audiences on audio platforms skew much younger, with the largest group being 25-34.
On YouTube more than half our viewers are over 45 years old.
This has led to some interesting feedback. For example, our audience seem to enjoy being able to take their time over content, and don’t require rapid edits every three seconds. In fact when we’ve edited content in a more punchy way, we’ve received comments complaining that it’s unnecessary.
We experimented with adding teasers at the top of the video to trail the best bits coming up, Diary of a CEO style. Several regular viewers commented that we should just start the interview and let them watch it, without preamble.
I can’t be 100% certain that this related to the age of the audience, but it challenges the assumption that YouTube podcasts should be edited like Mr Beast videos. You’re not serving his audience - you’re serving yours.
Loads of people watch YouTube podcasts on the TV
Way back in my early days of online publishing, I remember being in user experience sessions where publishers were shocked to learn that a large amount of web viewing happened on mobile.
Imagine!
(It was not long after the iPhone had become popular, so mobile browsing was still a new thing.)
When online video took off, many producers found it a challenging adjustment to consider shooting and editing for mobile first.
Making video for a mobile format creates certain creative imperatives: if content is consumed on a small screen it needs to be framed accordingly, and any graphics must be legible at small sizes.
A mobile delivery format comes with assumptions, too: attention is short, content must snappy and brief.
So like many I’ve become very accustomed to creating video with a mobile-first approach.
But viewer habits are changing.
In the past year, 21.4% of all views to the New Statesman podcast have come from users watching on a smart TV (or a device attached to a TV, like a Chromecast or Fire Stick).
In fact, by some studies this is a little below average. In a report from July 2024, Ofcom, the UK communications regulator, says:
“Thirty-four per cent of time spent watching YouTube at home is now on a TV set – up from 29% in 2022.”
When I realised this it took me by surprise, and has reframed how I think of our user experience.
Sure, around 50% of our views still happen on mobile, but there is a significant proportion of viewers who are choosing to switch to our channel on TV - presumably either relaxing on the sofa or in the background while doing something else.
If your YouTube podcast is being consumed by people in their lounge - rather than on their commute, for example - how would that change your approach?
Actions you can take now
Check your watch time data on different formats: news vs documentary vs interview, for example. Which formats are driving the highest watch time? Remember, watch time is a key success signal for the algorithm so it may be worth doubling down on this content type.
Check the age of your youtube audience. In YouTube Studio go to Analytics > Audience then scroll down to find the age and gender stats. How has the age of your audience changed over time? What does this tell you about how you could tailor your content to work better for this audience type?
Check the devices people are watching your content on. In YouTube Studio go to Analytics > Audience > See more, then on the ‘more’ drop-down to the top right, select Device Type. What can you do to tailor your shooting and editing style for your most popular devices?
Worth your time
Last week’s PodNews Weekly Review featured an enlightening interview with Jack Sylvester, Executive Director of Flight Studio, home to Stephen Bartlett’s Diary of a CEO. I found his insights into their data-led approach fascinating and inspiring. It’s particularly interesting to hear about the tools and products they’ve created to gauge how engaging their edit is, and the way they test every episode with a test audience before releasing it.
It’s not going to work for everyone (our own podcast schedule, for example, works to the news agenda and therefore a much faster turnaround per episode), but it definitely provoked some thoughts for me about how we can better measure value of our content to an audience.
Listen to the episode here:
That’s it for this week. Thanks so much for reading.
Remember, if you would value a service offering fast access to vetted & verified podcast professionals then please sign up for the wait list at podcastcrew.co.uk.
Until next time,
Chris.
Hard Talk has been successful for years on the BBC - both TV and Radio. It’s effectively a “two talking heads podcast” that’s made available in both mediums. Now that it’s being dropped, there’s probably an audience out there who are going to be looking for a replacement along the same lines - sounds like you have one ready made for them!
Some really interesting insights Chris. I've loved watching the pivot you've made on YouTube for the New Statesman.
At Which? we went the opposite direction initially. YouTube was the only channel we were making horizontal video for and (after a fairly successful early peak) it had been performing gradually less well for some time so we opted to go for Shorts only and align with all our other social outputs. However, more recently the team has been coming round to the idea that full length podcast videos may be the way to go and the experimentation has started. It'll be interesting to see if it gets the same results as you.