Legitbait is a really cool term. Super interesting video! The reality is that you have to be interesting with your thumbnails and titles or people will not watch them so we always have used clickbait (hopefully closer to legitbait) in the hope that our videos then are actually filled with enough substance that people will leave satisfied. We never tried switching out thumbnails though, might experiment with that!
"I'm terrible at making clickbait" says one of the people with the strongest title/thumbnail games on the platform. Seriously, the past two years of Veritasium has been a case study in how to make clickable videos while still respecting the intelligence of the audience.
Yo, how are we small channels supposed to compete when the big guys are boosting themselves with tools like sem rush and social plus? Feels like we're grinding hard but not getting the same visibility. Anyway, wishing everyone luck on their growth!
And yours generally are :) I mentioned this in another comment but your thumbnails also have something Veritasium's need more of - consistent branding/style. I see your videos pop up in my feed and I know who it is and that I should click on it without looking further, which increases the frequency TH-cam recommends them to me. The Veritasium videos I click the fastest have Derek's face in them.
I remember back in 2009 TH-cam had an option to report videos that had misleading titles or thumbnails. Nowadays if you do it they invite you to TH-cam HQ and put you in a Rewind video.
In case you're wondering, the recent title/thumb change seems to be effective - from "We Need to Talk About Clickbait [It's Important. I'll Explain With Data]" to "Clickbait is Unreasonably Effective [Here's The Proof]"... The problem is I know a bunch of you are clicking on this video to comment on the title and thumbnail change so that looks like a spike in engagement but then you comment and leave, which may make YT think the new title no longer appropriately represents the video. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
i have always wondered why when i first see you upload a new video, the video title suddenly changes after 24 - 72 hours and i was curious as to why.. well now i know why and i completely understand where you're coming from. props to you for being so honest and engaging with your audience. well done my friend.
When I first came across Veritasium I looked at the titles and thought "That's garbage, can't be true, clearly clickbait" and moved on. Then some of the researchers I worked with were talking (actually arguing) about a particularly interesting idea on a Veritasium vid, which got me to watch it - and I realised while the titles were absolutely crazy and hard to believe, they were also true. The great thing about this channel is that the team finds interesting and wild ideas that sound like they can't be true, and yet are - they use clickbait language that still manages to not be true (unlike so many that misinform willingly/intentionally). Bring on the legitbait!
I passed over the first Veritasium video I was recommended because my brain connected the channel name with some channels I had recently been duped by that also had "latin-esque" names. But the second time one was recommended, I watched, and watched some more, and through this channel got into Steve Mould, and through Steve got into Matt Parker. Another channel that got recommended to me from watching Veritasium was Xyla Foxlin, from which I started watching Allen Pan, who may also have been recommended because I watched Kyle Hill (the Mythbusters 2 competition link). - The recommendation engine is sometimes good, but more than half the time recommends things I don't care about, or channels I actively hate. If TH-cam never recommends a Joe Rogan video to me again, I might die happy.
Similar here. I got recommended the asteroid video (with the new title) and went like: "Ok, I know Veritasium is a great channel but this doesn't sound very interesting", and yet when in this video he started talking about "Asteroids: Earth's biggest threat" I was like: "Oh, this video sounds very interesting", only to be surprised that they're the same video.
This is such an interesting topic for youtubers. How a super small change in the title/thumbnail could provide a drastic change in the results of the video, while still trying to stay true to the actual content
dang, I see you be doin some research! Next video: "I speedrun making a clickbait thumbnail"? LOL.. wait I kinda like that idea. it would be fun/interesting to see how fast you can edit a thumbnail and we'd get a "behind the scenes" sorta thing too!
"I'm terrible at making clickbait" I believe you, even though you had Mr.Beast in your video you didn't use him as a clickbait in the thumbnail. Great Video
I love anti-clickbait. It’s like “here’s the short answer, but we both know I made a video because the long answer is crazy interesting”, and like… fair.
yeah, those "anti-clickbaits" are unresistable for me. Adam Neely is damn good at it. I love this because you know in a tl;dr what you get but its well made and interesting.
Anti-clickbait is win win, in my opinion. You get the effect of clickbait but you also continue to respect the intelligence of your audience. Do salt lamps work? Anyone with a basic understanding of chemistry and physics would probably guess the answer is "No" but I was very interested to see how the channel investigated the question.
It's kind of like a guarantee; they're willing to give away the short answer for free, so the long answer _must_ be interesting. It also feels ballsy and subversive, which engenders respect
I love how openly self-conscious you are about not only whether or not you are making the best content you can, but doing the right thing in the process. People say it's bad to overthink these things, but the alternative is far worse.
You're genuine. I hate that anyone making click bait could hide behind this spectacular video, but you've exonerated yourself. Recently found and now love your videos.
I think "The Secret of Synchronization" might outperform "The Surprising Secret of Synchronization" because the audience learned that "Surprising" often leads to Type II clickbaits.
Indeed. And I'm not surprised. Realizing a title is fake feels pretty bad and frustrated, and being not surprised like the title says suggests I might not be the target audience.
@@百合仙子 plus the majority of the time you aren't actually surprised. esp given that you often click on videos that are already within the realm of your knowledge or interests. to use a recent example I saw, if there is some video claiming to reveal some secret about the matrix films, you likely will only click on it if you know about or are a fan of those films. the only people likely to ever actually be surprised are people that probably would never click on such a video.
After this was posted I realized that your thumbnails are a perfect balance, in the title you state what the video is about, “the most misunderstood concept in physics”, but then to not withhold information, the thumbnail is one word “entropy” so the viewers get a taste on what the concept and video is about
It’d be cool if TH-cam let us upload multiple thumbnail/title combos with each video. It would show each of the combos to different sets of people, then depending on which one has the best CTR, it would start to show that one more and more to the masses.
I bet they could do one better... They can even segment viewers into hidden categories and test each group (ex, age groups and content habits), then assign each group the thumbnail and title that works best in that group automatically. I know TH-cam already have a lot of this data for its recommendations. So just also use it to test and select thumbnails too.
"Stuff with the most engagement rises to the top." Utter BS. "Stuff that fits Wojcicki's & the woke mafia rises to the top, while inconvenient facts are buried. Fixed it for you.
I've always thought that Tom Scott has the perfect balance between clickbait ( or in this case legitbait) and interesting content that isn't misleading.
Absolutely. There are a few that come to mind. "I promise this story about microwaves is interesting" is real good it was interesting, too, so legitbait
@@Louis-fh4sh Yeah that was Tom worrying too much about the same thing as this channel. Meanwhile subs know it’s legitbait 1000% and click when the bell rings. Other newbs who get lulled into viewing won’t mind either. It’s the people who *don’t* worry about sounding like clickbait that we hate :-D
So true. None come to mind for me... like Mr. Beast seems obvious, but it's his content that brings in the views not his legitbait. Now that you mention it though, I can't think of anyone better than Joe Scott. It's actually the perfect, most decent, engaging and informative, consumer-friendly balance of piquing my curiosity and letting me know if it's worth my time to click at any time. I watch every video eventually because he is exactly so forthright.
I think this is a universal truth everyone has experienced in a grocery checkout lane with all the tabloids doing exactly this. Most of us "want" to find out what the teases are on the cover but also most of us also know it's all just bs.
Exactly. When a subscriber is consistently dissatisfied by starving curiosity then this falls apart. Thankfully I have yet to find a video that was misrepresented on this channel.
I love the transparency of this video!!! Not only is this super helpful for the average viewer to be aware of, and the budding content creator to be aware of-but you're also able to highlight the values of you and your channel! I applaud the hell out of you for this. Seriously. Thank you
I think Tom Scott does a great job with the title and thumbnail. Not obnoxious, but genuinely interesting. CGP Grey is also pretty good. I like that overall style.
With Tom Scott's videos, the title matches exactly what he delivers: interesting topic explored well in the limits of the time frame. It never feels cheap and I never get the idea that I was tricked into clicking them.
Day 1: “We need to talk about clickbait” Day 2: “Mr. Beast and I need to talk about clickbait” Day 3: "Mr. Beast and I almost died when we talked about clickbait"
I was to send Veritasium team a message exactly on this topic! I was getting your videos on my feed for sometime now, but avoiding them because the titles and thumbnails looked like clickbait. Last week I finally gave up and decided to watch one. I was so happy I had finally found a channel about science that is serious rather than sensational (on a personal note, this what I miss most about science channels on television)... And was thinking to myself, now that I know about the channel, I'd watch any video, even if the title sounds more "classical" or "boring". Now the reason is explained. Thanks for making the content that you make, see you around!
TH-cam should properly support a/b testing in creator studio. It would make this type of performance analysis a lot easier and would likely benefit the platform.
Yeah, that was my immediate thought too, but I think there's one really difficult problem to solve Let's say I watch a video called "Why clickbait is bad!" My friend tells to search it on TH-cam I try to find that video, but I can't, because for ME it's actually called "The science of clickbait". But because I don't know that since TH-cam is A/B testing me, I never find it I tell him I can't find it, so he sends me a link. but now is someone who maybe hasn't really used TH-cam before, I'm extremely confused why I wasn't able to find the video until he sent me the link
do you walk up to a couple in the street and question why they’re holding hands? i imagine not, so why question why he is simply holding onto his lover?
As a creator, I'm all too familiar with this problem. And it stinks for me because I'd rather spend all of my time focused on creating the content, but instead I have to waste a lot of time finding the right thumbnails. And I still to this day have some of my best videos that rarely get viewed because I simply haven't figured out the right clickbait for them.
You're the opposite to my comment above. Veratassium rarely gets a view from me because "picture with a word" = click bait and I don't even bother looking at the creator. I'll click on yours because I know I enjoy your content and your branding is consistent. Its a really shitty thing that Google has created here.
Eh as a subscriber with notifications to both you and Veritasium I see everything and tend to skip clickbaity titles. Unless like Veritasium’s and they aren’t flat out insultingly desperate.
Ironically, the original title was more similar to "lets have a talk about clickbait" and I chose not to click it since it was to vague. I only chose to click it after seeing the name change to "clickbait is unreasonably effective"
I added it to my watch later list with the first title, because I saw the other video of his on this topic years ago and wanted to know what he has to say now. I wouldn't have watched it with the new one though, because duh, of course it is unreasonably effective. And so I would expect less new thoughts/angles/whatever on the clickbait matter from him.
i clicked the video on "We need to talk about clickbait" but i was pulled away from the computer to do other things, finally came back to it now though lol
I hate clickbait titles and thumbnails. I actively avoid videos and articles with them out of spite. I hate that they're effective, because that means they're never going away, and I have to see them constantly.
And mind you TH-cam came into the online social media internet stage roughly one year after Roblox came out in 2006, and TH-cam started out as it just educational stuff posted by the people who made the company, so the companies growth 📈 in progress in terms of development was slow, but once the first TH-camrs who date back before Stampy long cat, mrbeast, and other old TH-camrs came into the his stage there was seemingly explosive growth as now more, and more TH-camr's who existed on multiple other platforms before they had a TH-cam career joined, and made TH-cam videos doing crazy challenges which gathered so many views that the company had to expand, and adapt also they had to become bigger they even got into a partnership with Google to expand even more the average video in TH-cam kind of golden era of 2010 was people counting to 537 in one sitting, and probably taking live footage of a famous structure in their local area saying: I'm currently in front of (insert their towns famous structure here) and right now I'm going to walk inside of it because it's a pretty impressive building, so I can show you the inside of it! The comment section when the video was live: (if videos are live until the video is finished after being uploaded to TH-cam back then) (everyone: OMG it looks so cool!!!) Nowadays: the average video is MrBeast eating $50,000 ice cream, eating the largest slice of pizza, being buried alive for 50 hours straight, Mark Rober making the world's smallest nerf gun, And so much more! The modern-day comment section when the video is live: (everyone: OMG I'm completely speechless by how great the video is!!!!!!!!!!!) So in retrospect if you look through TH-cam's entire history year by year it would be surprising that TH-cam has come this far in so little time! 😅🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉
Well actually that isn't quite true and the reason why might surprise you. See it all started with the rise of yellow journalism in the 1920's, thanks to an editor at the. . . . . . . . . . . Hahaha got ya with some clickbait 😁😁
@@MrTAGGER88I hate you so much I got baited and I use TH-cam on the TV so I can’t see the rest of your comment without having to click directly and enter inside the comment so you literally clickbaited me
I just wish TH-cam would add an A/B feature so creators didn't have to spend the first few hours/days babysitting their videos to try to achieve a good CTR.
I mean there is always the youtube api so an A/B feature can already easily be implemented using it. A couple python lines in AWS Lambda do the job fine.
It’s not the fact that these clickbait TH-camrs make a lot of money or fame, it’s that they steal a lot of their viewers’ time with irrelevant material, then the actual content you clicked for is at the end of the video. My main focus is the viewers’ time, that’s why I want to stop this clickbait epidemic.
"I want to make science documentaries in youtube that puts broadcast to shame" And to be honest, you have. It made me reflect on how have I got into interesting science topics in the last 8 years, and its been mostly through your videos. And thats a lot because I just graduated as a biologist! It is thanks to your videos and videos from others like Michael from Vsauce that I keep finding my passion about science. So thank you. I always go back to some of your videos (What is not random and Our Greatest Delusion) because they are truly inspirational. You are the Carl Sagan of a generation!
After getting used to good TH-cam creators, traditional broadcast educational material has been basically ruined for me. The cuts, excessive editing, overly dramatic acting and more things I only just 'feel' really make them less enjoyable to watch these days. As an example - I used to love Mythbusters but I can't go back and rewatch it because there's only a few minutes of real content and the rest is just hype and acting.
This is so true - some TH-cam creators are just outstanding and just the best in the world - bigger budgets don’t help there either (if you don’t have the talent)
This channel doesn’t make Clickbait, it doesn’t constantly ask to like, subscribe and leave a comment. That’s why I’ve subscribed, always like, and leave comments 😊😊😊
A trend on TH-cam, that I really like, are videos where the title might be clickbait-y, but the thumbnail "fixes" the curiosity gap. So, while the title alone might be clickbait, the title+thumbnail is legitbait. A lot of Veritasium videos are good examples: The Biggest Myth in Education (thumbnail answers what the myth is: "You are not a visual learner") Backspin Basketball Flies Off Dam (the thumbnail answers why: "Magnus effect") Without the "answers" in the thumbnail, I would probably call the above titles clickbait, but with them, I don't think they're clickbait.
Or "The simplest math problem no one can solve" with thumbnail "3x + 1" which would have been way too clickbaity otherwise. I agree, it's a great approach.
I would've skipped the video if it had a ft. *random guy* unless it's some other youtuber I like a lot. And I think I'm not alone in this approach to that kind of clickbait. So it's a choice between: - trying to attract everyone outside the set of people who watch veritasium with let's call it a "normal" probability of success. - trying to attract *random guy's* audience with a higher than "normal" probability of success, but everyone else with a lower than "normal" probability. Good luck estimating the probabilities to figure out a better choice)
@@Steelrat1994I don't get why u would skip a video if it had a "random guy" featuring, even if I don't know who the youtuber is , I would still check what the video is about without just skipping.
I could not stop watching this video. You have opened my eyes to the very thing missing from my titles and thumbnails. As you have demonstrated in the video and with your thumbnail and title, it suddenly becomes clear to me. Very much appreciated, thank you.
I am still watching the video, does he speak about how YT is segregating the people and putting them in echo chambers? How it is making people impulsive quick to reject information from other points of views? How when they are given opposite information, they reinforce their thoughts with the information from their feeds? We're all screwed and we don't know it yet...
I was just surfing through your videos for something to watch and thinking to my self “I really appreciate how he doesn’t use clickbait” then I landed on this video.
_"We need to talk about clickbait..."_ _"I spent 19 MINUTES on a ladder, and here's what happened."_ _"HOW HIGH DID I CLIMB??? feat. MrBeast"_ _"This secret is costing you millions of views"_
Honestly this should just be an AB testing feature that TH-cam offers to their creators. You submit multiple pairs of thumbnails and for limited time TH-cam will show all of those to same number of people. Then after the initial experiment only the pair with most impressions is shown to any new people.
I’m pretty sure that is a thing, unless I’ve just seen creators manually change their thumbnails. I have absolutely seen different thumbnails for the same recently uploaded videos.
I love the humility in pointing out that titling a video "Strange Applications of the Magnus Effect" was not a great marketing strategy. That being said, you are killing it on the viewership front and this is one of my favourite channels!
I thought the same. Initially I asked myself, “why doesn’t he do slides and then narrate them?” But that cannot show his face easily. I think his setup, although totally strange and non-conventional, is easy to do with minimal amount of work.
"I'm terrible at making clickbait." Really? "Risking My Life To Settle A Physics Debate" was an immediately clickable title. Edit: This is a compliment, not an accusation.
I am impressed with how he stood on a ladder staring at a projector light for hours filming this. I would be blind and suffering from a recent fall if I were Derek. PS: I really like the visual learner vid.
@@tonyfalapatt1308 Are you in the beam of the projector? Because it's like trying to ignore someone shining a flashlight at you. Otherwise... that's a nice projector. I just don't understand why he couldn't put everything two feet lower and stand on the ground, rather than using a ladder.
All true, and it is why newspapers used to hire good sub editors to think up catchy headlines for articles. Journalists often protested that the headlines didn't reflect the content of what they wrote, but the catchy headlines got the readers for their copy - Rob
If the headline doesn't say what the article is about, I simply won't read it. There are too many headlines like that, ain't nobody got time for that. But what I noticed is that if there are numbers in the headline, those numbers will be different in the lede, and different again in the article. For example: Thousands dead! In a catastrophy last week, hundreds have died… … The two people who have died… I also noticed that in newspaper forums, the commenters are usually refering to the headline, not the article. Sometimes I wonder why journalists even bother.
@@csn583 I will not read the whole article just to know what's it about. The headline should make it clear what happened I don't have the time to read the whole thing
(I can tell you) The difference in every one of the example videos shown, THE PHOTO. It was the different photo (MUCH more than the title) that made all the difference. [a basketball with two arrows] vs [leaning over a dam+ the white path it will take+ arrows] [half photo you+ Ions Good For You?] vs [central photo of you+ "NO"] It is the photo, not the title.
@@veritasium to be really honest, i love your videos so much that even if you upload a 30 min video with the title "i cant think of a title" i'd still happily jump to click it! ;D
Banner advertisement worked very well once. Few don't know how ugly it ended. Recent youtube's policies make me open platform less and less. 2 unskippable adds for a freaking minute...
"I wanna make science documentaries on youtube that put broadcast to shame", this is the reason why I watch Veritasium, love the confidence and motivation. It's also inspiring me to start my own channel
although when Mr. Beast's Video titled something like "If You click on this video, You get a chance to win 1M dollars" I never ended up watching the video. The Click bait made me not want to watch the video.
'How kindness can kill.' is the title of our video about effective altruism. It's fairly clickbaity, but people are watching and donating to the most effective charities. I often struggle to know where the line is. If people are happy after watching the video, does that mean it's ok? I don't know. Brilliant video as always Derek.
I feel that as long as you are not lying, you can be as clickbaity as you want. Your title clearly is interesting, showing a contrast between the words you are using, a paradox that interests people. If in your video you effectively explain why altruism can be dangerous, the title effectively communicates part of the content of the video, in an interesting way. If you phrased it differently, like "Kindness kills", which is almost the same but very different in the meaning, you would have made a false title (because kindness does not kill usually), That is a lie, so a bad kind of clickbait.
@@giannipiccioni8411 Thanks. It might be that we worry more about this than most viewers, who just want to see good videos, though it's easy to be blinded by incentives. It's not the money (effective altruism groups asked to sponsor videos, and I asked them to keep the money and made a video anyway) - it's the impact. Arguing against political correctness, Stephen Fry said "It's more important to be effective than to be right - in the sense of self-righteous etc." I think there's also a risk of limiting positive impact to save our own embarrassment. And I've just realised that yes, we worry too much about this - I'm rambling - Mr Beast is right : )
@@philippschreier398 Yes I think that's good, but what if it delivers something slightly different, which they are equally happy with? Can a nice surprise be a good thing?
I like that the titles of your best videos sound a lot like good titles for newspaper articles... you're just using good journalism rules. Thank you for sharing this.
360 fortnite roblox kidnapped crying in basement spongebob minecraft your mom is pregnant get round house kicked in the back halo reach pewdiepie epic games twitter freestyle amongus.
“Surprising” is an overused clickbait that people are desensitised to; this means that people have developed an immune response to unconsciously ignore such bait.
6:57 This point still stands true though. The people that ignore clickbait don’t matter. It’s the people that fall for it that do, and more of them come over time.
I never thought of a good title as _clickbait._ For me, clickbait is when you bait people with something that's supposedly happening inside the video and then either have that something be a ridiculously small fraction of the video that has no meaning and quality at all or not have it in the video at all. Clickbait can also be when there's a title that states that something extraordinary happens, like *"Brother PUNCHES sister IN THE FACE until she BLEEDS"* and then you see a video of a dude accidentally tripping and hitting his sister, who's lip bleeds a little tiny bit, but not very much.
While growing up , we come under the pressure of 'knowing too much, and there's no more need of it'. If destroys our curiosity to be a learner. Thank you for this enlightening video.
He calls it "a scientific problem" Derek you really are a true scientist, problem solver, teacher & an inspiration to many people. Thank you for everything.
@@HmHm-xz9nv True, I watch Veritasium no matter what he posts. Thats the power of getting true subscribers. You get some constant views, and then u can aim for more random people
But are the results coming from "better" titles, or simply the act of changing the titles. This seemed unclear to me in Veritasium's video because the chart suddenly showed an influx of new views when the title changed, but how can we know whether it's because the new title was better or simply because it was new?
Yeah, that's a good question, @@nihilozero, if by it you mean the thumbnail too. Because that might produce the "Oh, here's one from this guy that I haven't seen yet!" effect, even for people who'd still find the new name and pic boring, simply because they like just about everything that guy posts. I wonder how a study specifically about that might be conducted.
@@nihilozero personally I saved it to my watch later as soon as I got the notification so I could watch it later. Probably after he's already done all the changing and stuff.
@@chan625 yes you come in this is marvelous Anna in the bathroom of the hotel room you have to jump into the Russian about changing Smith Sam Smith's about this peanuts nuages about the tombstone that I could find intuited highlighted peanuts
This video mad me realize why I click on less and less videos from Veritasium and its increasing clickbait title and thumbnails. Building the curiosity gap takes time, so overall there is less and less to learn and the video length rises.
It’s the same problem when teaching in a classroom setting. You can be teaching great content, but if you don’t package it in a way that is engaging, your will lose your students’ interest and they won’t retain it.
Mr Beast’s face on teaching material? Maybe we don’t have to go so far, but this video made me think about that too, how school material is often not engaging.
I don't disagree that there is an important issue embedded in this, but the problem being talked about here is not the problem of being engaging enough. It's the problem of misrepresenting yourself for the sake of being engaging, and that isn't a problem that teachers really tend to have, aside from narrow cases like the classic "underwater basket weaving" that hypothetically exist to give out easy A's to college athletes. Most teachers teach in a setting where students know what to expect, and are there in spite of that - the teacher doesn't need to trick people through the door.
@Deborah Ajao That's easy. Multimedia is just inherently a better teaching platform than a lecture is, because it communicates on more levels, and also because it allows for pausing and backing up if you didn't catch something. The people who say this are people who have relied on lectures for learning, and it has failed them for the obvious reason that lectures are a poor way to teach concepts. School has historically combined lecture and homework and said that the mix gives you what you need, to learn. And it works. But if you don't do enough homework and rely on lectures, then yeah, obviously well-done multimedia is going to be better. Engagement isn't really an important distinction there, because the engagement in a classroom setting comes from the fact that a student "has" to be there, either because they paid for it or because someone is making them go. Where engagement matters is when considering people who wouldn't bother learning about the material at all, without access to the video. Those are the people who are getting something they wouldn't otherwise get. But those are people that teachers basically never see anyway, so the experience of a traditional educator doesn't really correlate.
The most memorable clickbait I remember was: _"this young genius proved 20 nobel prize winners wrong!"_ I have no idea of where the stupid link led, because I didn't click.
The most memorable clickbait I remember was the TH-cam video called "the greatest paralympic scandal" or something like that and the thumbnail was literally just the words "They weren't disabled." I clicked on it.
I only saw the second one, and I don't think I would necessarily have clicked on the first one. First one has an ambiguous and almost negative tone, which, I think, would have made me think that the video would be about 'what is wrong with clickbait' (something I already saw a lot) in contrast to the second one which have a more neutral and pragmatic tone and made me think the video will be about the phenomenon as a whole with an interesting way of seeing it (including data with the thumbnail).
i clicked on the first one (it was in my subs) but didn't get around to watching it until after the title changed. wonder how many other people this happened to
To be honest, I specifically didn't click on the "The simplest math problem no one can solve" video, because "no one can solve/do this problem/challenge" is such a widely used clickbait trope, I have been conditioned to always avoid it. I didn't even realize it was a Veritasium video.
Legitbait is a really cool term. Super interesting video! The reality is that you have to be interesting with your thumbnails and titles or people will not watch them so we always have used clickbait (hopefully closer to legitbait) in the hope that our videos then are actually filled with enough substance that people will leave satisfied. We never tried switching out thumbnails though, might experiment with that!
I read the comment in an English accent
Nah, your videos are super interesting and cool. I dont think you need it :p
100% your videos are legitbait, I’m never disappointed with a Kurzgesagt video
Can't believe I am one of the first commenters for your comment
No matter what the title or thumbnail, I’ll always watch a video of yours!
"I'm terrible at making clickbait" says one of the people with the strongest title/thumbnail games on the platform. Seriously, the past two years of Veritasium has been a case study in how to make clickable videos while still respecting the intelligence of the audience.
I can't believe I only just now noticed that you guys don't have a verified checkmark.
..Why is that? 🤔
okay fine
Yes, I have discussions on reddit that Mark Rober and Veritasium have cracked the code to TH-cam algorithm.
wow i could never have said it better, that's exactly it
He's reflecting on his entire time in TH-cam. For the longest time, he never bothered with his title/thumbnail game.
Yo, how are we small channels supposed to compete when the big guys are boosting themselves with tools like sem rush and social plus? Feels like we're grinding hard but not getting the same visibility. Anyway, wishing everyone luck on their growth!
@@Galeriarch haha good point
Government regulations for monopolizing?
and this comment alone is a click bait 😉
Use the same tricks, make thumbnails with more click-appeal
I use “clickworthy”
Click clarity
You stole that from Linus
*"The Insane Engeneering behind clickbait!*
And yours generally are :) I mentioned this in another comment but your thumbnails also have something Veritasium's need more of - consistent branding/style. I see your videos pop up in my feed and I know who it is and that I should click on it without looking further, which increases the frequency TH-cam recommends them to me. The Veritasium videos I click the fastest have Derek's face in them.
Veritasium is clickworthy. "OMG you wont BELEOVE what happens next" and the video is dumb is click bait
This guy really just stood on a ladder and gave a power point presentation
That's Derek for you. Gotta love his commitment and quality content.
And I absolutely loved it
Cool idea 👍
It was unreasonably effective
That's a stepladder
I remember back in 2009 TH-cam had an option to report videos that had misleading titles or thumbnails. Nowadays if you do it they invite you to TH-cam HQ and put you in a Rewind video.
mate your comment got botted
Sheesh 🍩🍩🍩
someone give this person a cookie
Funny how he interviewed Mrbeast - He's the one who does most clickbait on youtube!!!!!!!!
@@nathanvarghese. how? anything he puts in the title is in the vid
In case you're wondering, the recent title/thumb change seems to be effective - from "We Need to Talk About Clickbait [It's Important. I'll Explain With Data]" to "Clickbait is Unreasonably Effective [Here's The Proof]"... The problem is I know a bunch of you are clicking on this video to comment on the title and thumbnail change so that looks like a spike in engagement but then you comment and leave, which may make YT think the new title no longer appropriately represents the video. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
That makes sense
So if the universe begins to unravel in the next few hours we know who to blame?
The algorithm only fed me this video after you’d updated your title. I’m a sub, so, make of that what you will 😅
Hopefully it actually is a better combo
i have always wondered why when i first see you upload a new video, the video title suddenly changes after 24 - 72 hours and i was curious as to why.. well now i know why and i completely understand where you're coming from. props to you for being so honest and engaging with your audience. well done my friend.
When I first came across Veritasium I looked at the titles and thought "That's garbage, can't be true, clearly clickbait" and moved on. Then some of the researchers I worked with were talking (actually arguing) about a particularly interesting idea on a Veritasium vid, which got me to watch it - and I realised while the titles were absolutely crazy and hard to believe, they were also true. The great thing about this channel is that the team finds interesting and wild ideas that sound like they can't be true, and yet are - they use clickbait language that still manages to not be true (unlike so many that misinform willingly/intentionally). Bring on the legitbait!
I passed over the first Veritasium video I was recommended because my brain connected the channel name with some channels I had recently been duped by that also had "latin-esque" names.
But the second time one was recommended, I watched, and watched some more, and through this channel got into Steve Mould, and through Steve got into Matt Parker.
Another channel that got recommended to me from watching Veritasium was Xyla Foxlin, from which I started watching Allen Pan, who may also have been recommended because I watched Kyle Hill (the Mythbusters 2 competition link).
-
The recommendation engine is sometimes good, but more than half the time recommends things I don't care about, or channels I actively hate.
If TH-cam never recommends a Joe Rogan video to me again, I might die happy.
IT'S MISTER. BEAST!!!!!!!!!!!!! Everyone please sing the mister beast outro song!!!!!!!!!!! ❤❤❤❤❤❤
His whole point is that the vids are for educating most people not people who are actively working in or around research like yourself
@@DavidMuri-lm5vywierdo
Similar here. I got recommended the asteroid video (with the new title) and went like: "Ok, I know Veritasium is a great channel but this doesn't sound very interesting", and yet when in this video he started talking about "Asteroids: Earth's biggest threat" I was like: "Oh, this video sounds very interesting", only to be surprised that they're the same video.
This is such an interesting topic for youtubers. How a super small change in the title/thumbnail could provide a drastic change in the results of the video, while still trying to stay true to the actual content
You watch Veritasium?
Having a second channel with other speed runners tends to help too
dang, I see you be doin some research! Next video: "I speedrun making a clickbait thumbnail"? LOL.. wait I kinda like that idea. it would be fun/interesting to see how fast you can edit a thumbnail and we'd get a "behind the scenes" sorta thing too!
Hi
Look now he is even speed running TH-cam
Props to Derek for permanently letting a projector shine into his eyes for the whole record.
And standing awkwardly on top of a ladder
Look at the shadow. It is not
lmao
Props*?
@@nasreddinegalfout8893 Yes it is. Otherwise his face would not be lit at all
Yup
Agreed
I concur
well said
yup
I disagree. Here's why:
Guy climbs up a ladder, and you WON'T BELIEVE what happens next!!!
"I'm terrible at making clickbait" I believe you, even though you had Mr.Beast in your video you didn't use him as a clickbait in the thumbnail. Great Video
Check back again in a few days :P
Exactly what I was about to comment, lol
i was about to comment same thing lol
😂
Lmao, but if you hover over the video, the preview shows Mr. Beast in it, this has to be some advance lvl planing and non can tell me different
I love anti-clickbait. It’s like “here’s the short answer, but we both know I made a video because the long answer is crazy interesting”, and like… fair.
yeah, those "anti-clickbaits" are unresistable for me. Adam Neely is damn good at it. I love this because you know in a tl;dr what you get but its well made and interesting.
Anti-clickbait is win win, in my opinion. You get the effect of clickbait but you also continue to respect the intelligence of your audience. Do salt lamps work? Anyone with a basic understanding of chemistry and physics would probably guess the answer is "No" but I was very interested to see how the channel investigated the question.
Agreed. Check the thumbnail of "How Much Money I Made From Game Development This Past Year" by Miziziziz. Great example.
It's kind of like a guarantee; they're willing to give away the short answer for free, so the long answer _must_ be interesting. It also feels ballsy and subversive, which engenders respect
This is what I love about Tom Scott and Vsauce. Sometimes, the simplest things can create the most intrigue.
I love how openly self-conscious you are about not only whether or not you are making the best content you can, but doing the right thing in the process. People say it's bad to overthink these things, but the alternative is far worse.
You're genuine. I hate that anyone making click bait could hide behind this spectacular video, but you've exonerated yourself. Recently found and now love your videos.
I think "The Secret of Synchronization" might outperform "The Surprising Secret of Synchronization" because the audience learned that "Surprising" often leads to Type II clickbaits.
indeed
I also think it moved the emphasis away from "secret," which is more powerful than "surprising."
Indeed. And I'm not surprised. Realizing a title is fake feels pretty bad and frustrated, and being not surprised like the title says suggests I might not be the target audience.
@@百合仙子 plus the majority of the time you aren't actually surprised. esp given that you often click on videos that are already within the realm of your knowledge or interests. to use a recent example I saw, if there is some video claiming to reveal some secret about the matrix films, you likely will only click on it if you know about or are a fan of those films. the only people likely to ever actually be surprised are people that probably would never click on such a video.
We Synchronized and found out the hidden secret
Would have never clicked for strange applications of Magnus Effect!!
But I click on every video of yours now, irrespective of thumbnail or title :)
Bruh
Verified with no comments?
Not nymore
Jai Hind bhai!🙏
awww
Alternative title: "I CLICKBAITED My Audience And You WON'T BELIEVE What Happened Next 😨!!!"
Oh big Finnish channel. Torilla tavataan 🥳😉
Fakebait
@@Lunar_360 also add (Mind blowing result!!!)
@Thishan Mallawa Arachchi LMFAOOOOO I WAS GONNA SAY THAT
I think the current title will only attract the people who want to know how all of this work.
After this was posted I realized that your thumbnails are a perfect balance, in the title you state what the video is about, “the most misunderstood concept in physics”, but then to not withhold information, the thumbnail is one word “entropy” so the viewers get a taste on what the concept and video is about
It’d be cool if TH-cam let us upload multiple thumbnail/title combos with each video. It would show each of the combos to different sets of people, then depending on which one has the best CTR, it would start to show that one more and more to the masses.
Interesting. This is kind of how Tinder shows people pictures on your dating profile.
funny enough, this is how google handles news articles in order to get more clicks(and thus revenue) overall.
I bet they could do one better... They can even segment viewers into hidden categories and test each group (ex, age groups and content habits), then assign each group the thumbnail and title that works best in that group automatically. I know TH-cam already have a lot of this data for its recommendations. So just also use it to test and select thumbnails too.
A/B testing
I like the idea. Leave the clickbait to the machines
Thank you for being so truthful👑 you’ll always be a legend in my eyes
Yo it's the guy from Beijing corn
yo didn't know the ceo of Beijing corn was interested by clickbait
Hey Steven one of your biggest fan here
STOOPID
"Stuff with the most engagement rises to the top."
Utter BS. "Stuff that fits Wojcicki's & the woke mafia rises to the top, while inconvenient facts are buried.
Fixed it for you.
I've always thought that Tom Scott has the perfect balance between clickbait ( or in this case legitbait) and interesting content that isn't misleading.
Absolutely. There are a few that come to mind. "I promise this story about microwaves is interesting" is real good
it was interesting, too, so legitbait
@@Louis-fh4sh
Yeah that was Tom worrying too much about the same thing as this channel.
Meanwhile subs know it’s legitbait 1000% and click when the bell rings.
Other newbs who get lulled into viewing won’t mind either.
It’s the people who *don’t* worry about sounding like clickbait that we hate :-D
tom scott is great
So true. None come to mind for me... like Mr. Beast seems obvious, but it's his content that brings in the views not his legitbait. Now that you mention it though, I can't think of anyone better than Joe Scott. It's actually the perfect, most decent, engaging and informative, consumer-friendly balance of piquing my curiosity and letting me know if it's worth my time to click at any time. I watch every video eventually because he is exactly so forthright.
Wait. I thought we were talking about _Joe_ Scott. Yeah, Tom's not bad either I guess, but Joe's videos are _WAY_ more digestible.
I think this is a universal truth everyone has experienced in a grocery checkout lane with all the tabloids doing exactly this. Most of us "want" to find out what the teases are on the cover but also most of us also know it's all just bs.
The key difference is that your videos actually deliver the satisfaction that the title and thumbnail teases us with.
Legitbait
Exactly. When a subscriber is consistently dissatisfied by starving curiosity then this falls apart. Thankfully I have yet to find a video that was misrepresented on this channel.
Type 1 clickbait-
He's pretty bad at it though, this guy didn't even put, "(ft. MrBeast)" in this title xD
@@AceFaz 😂
@@AceFaz that's the point, I don't click on Veritasium's videos to see Mr. Beast.
The BEST non-clickbait clickbait video I've ever seen!
Funny how he interviewed Mrbeast - He's the one who does most clickbait on youtube!!!!!!!!
🙌🏼
(not clickbait)
Naah man ... you got click baited to this click bait video
Type I clickbait
How is this not called "Mr Beast teaches me about clickbait" and include Mr Beast in the thumbnail? (Or maybe it will soon! Or maybe it did!)
the thumbnail did when it was uploaded but he changed it after a couple of hours
I think it did and he is specifically testing the effects of the thumbnail on the click-through-rate by swapping between different ones.
@@Rekisen1 Was there a red circle around him?
@@Shmidershmax there was a red arrow
@@Rekisen1 My memory is bad cause I don't remember that lol
I love the transparency of this video!!! Not only is this super helpful for the average viewer to be aware of, and the budding content creator to be aware of-but you're also able to highlight the values of you and your channel! I applaud the hell out of you for this. Seriously. Thank you
I think Tom Scott does a great job with the title and thumbnail.
Not obnoxious, but genuinely interesting. CGP Grey is also pretty good. I like that overall style.
With Tom Scott's videos, the title matches exactly what he delivers: interesting topic explored well in the limits of the time frame. It never feels cheap and I never get the idea that I was tricked into clicking them.
I agree gcp titles and thumbnails are legitbait
@@GrandElemental But I don't think you can pull that off with veritasiam content though.
Tom's Red Tshirt is enough to get my click
I agree. But Tom's video is a whole different ball game from super educational veritasium videos, so they are unapplicable.
Day 1: “We need to talk about clickbait”
Day 2: “Mr. Beast and I need to talk about clickbait”
Day 3: "Mr. Beast and I almost died when we talked about clickbait"
Day 4: "Mr. Beast and I almost died. GOING SUS / POSSIBLE INTERCOURSE"
day 4: I shot Mr. Beast! 😱 (with information)
Underrated comment
day 666: amogus
Day 5: It's all over. End of our channels?
Titles and thumbnails are the thing I stress about the most. This was very insightful. Thank you!
Hi
Your content speaks for itself though. You could number your videos, in name and thumbnail, and people would flock to them.
It's the thing I stress about the most too!
@@veritasium I think that most scientists have a hard time with paper titles too.
Also: TH-cam shorts please, a la ActionLabs and The Spiffing Brit
@@veritasium Can you make another video on the kuramoto model explaining it? I liked it so much i want part 2!
I was to send Veritasium team a message exactly on this topic! I was getting your videos on my feed for sometime now, but avoiding them because the titles and thumbnails looked like clickbait.
Last week I finally gave up and decided to watch one. I was so happy I had finally found a channel about science that is serious rather than sensational (on a personal note, this what I miss most about science channels on television)... And was thinking to myself, now that I know about the channel, I'd watch any video, even if the title sounds more "classical" or "boring".
Now the reason is explained. Thanks for making the content that you make, see you around!
TH-cam should properly support a/b testing in creator studio. It would make this type of performance analysis a lot easier and would likely benefit the platform.
It would be nice but I don't think it would be very easy for them to actually pull off
I'm pretty sure they did for a while but ended up scrapping it
Yeah, that was my immediate thought too, but I think there's one really difficult problem to solve
Let's say I watch a video called "Why clickbait is bad!"
My friend tells to search it on TH-cam
I try to find that video, but I can't, because for ME it's actually called "The science of clickbait". But because I don't know that since TH-cam is A/B testing me, I never find it
I tell him I can't find it, so he sends me a link. but now is someone who maybe hasn't really used TH-cam before, I'm extremely confused why I wasn't able to find the video until he sent me the link
@@mistersir that's a really good point indeed. A/B testing does have its downsides I suppose.
Pretty sure it would actively make clickbait more common than already there, and make the entire platform worse.
I think Tom Scott is pretty good at this. While his titles are often clickbaity, he always delivers on the promise but not always as you would expect.
His videos always leave me with more questions which is actually a good thing. I end up on wikipedia for hours.
Tom Scott has enough clout to get away with stuff others can't. Like "I promise this video about microwaves is interesting".
Sort of a less schizophrenic vsauce
I always feel weird about falling for clickbait, but when I watch his, or Veritasium, or smarter every day, I am always pleasantly surprised
or vsauce 2
20 minutes of wondering "Why is he on a ladder" with no relief at the end in a video about clickbait. Meta game is strong in this one.
i agree
do you walk up to a couple in the street and question why they’re holding hands? i imagine not, so why question why he is simply holding onto his lover?
exactly what i was thinking
As a creator, I'm all too familiar with this problem. And it stinks for me because I'd rather spend all of my time focused on creating the content, but instead I have to waste a lot of time finding the right thumbnails. And I still to this day have some of my best videos that rarely get viewed because I simply haven't figured out the right clickbait for them.
What are your best videos that go unnoticed?
You're the opposite to my comment above. Veratassium rarely gets a view from me because "picture with a word" = click bait and I don't even bother looking at the creator. I'll click on yours because I know I enjoy your content and your branding is consistent.
Its a really shitty thing that Google has created here.
Hi
We have something in common. Spend lot of time creating educational videos and yet less than a hundred views 🤦♀️
Eh as a subscriber with notifications to both you and Veritasium I see everything and tend to skip clickbaity titles. Unless like Veritasium’s and they aren’t flat out insultingly desperate.
"I don't want to make vlogs, I want to make science documentaries on TH-cam that puts broadcast to shame." And for that, I love this channel
Also, mission accomplished!
That line was savage
Ironically, the original title was more similar to "lets have a talk about clickbait" and I chose not to click it since it was to vague. I only chose to click it after seeing the name change to "clickbait is unreasonably effective"
It was "We need to talk about clickbait"
I had the same lol
I added it to my watch later list with the first title, because I saw the other video of his on this topic years ago and wanted to know what he has to say now.
I wouldn't have watched it with the new one though, because duh, of course it is unreasonably effective. And so I would expect less new thoughts/angles/whatever on the clickbait matter from him.
Which it was.
i clicked the video on "We need to talk about clickbait" but i was pulled away from the computer to do other things, finally came back to it now though lol
I hate clickbait titles and thumbnails. I actively avoid videos and articles with them out of spite. I hate that they're effective, because that means they're never going away, and I have to see them constantly.
Because most people are mentally weak and have no discipline.
And mind you TH-cam came into the online social media internet stage roughly one year after Roblox came out in 2006, and TH-cam started out as it just educational stuff posted by the people who made the company, so the companies growth 📈 in progress in terms of development was slow, but once the first TH-camrs who date back before Stampy long cat, mrbeast, and other old TH-camrs came into the his stage there was seemingly explosive growth as now more, and more TH-camr's who existed on multiple other platforms before they had a TH-cam career joined, and made TH-cam videos doing crazy challenges which gathered so many views that the company had to expand, and adapt also they had to become bigger they even got into a partnership with Google to expand even more the average video in TH-cam kind of golden era of 2010 was people counting to 537 in one sitting, and probably taking live footage of a famous structure in their local area saying: I'm currently in front of (insert their towns famous structure here) and right now I'm going to walk inside of it because it's a pretty impressive building, so I can show you the inside of it! The comment section when the video was live: (if videos are live until the video is finished after being uploaded to TH-cam back then) (everyone: OMG it looks so cool!!!) Nowadays: the average video is MrBeast eating $50,000 ice cream, eating the largest slice of pizza, being buried alive for 50 hours straight, Mark Rober making the world's smallest nerf gun, And so much more! The modern-day comment section when the video is live: (everyone: OMG I'm completely speechless by how great the video is!!!!!!!!!!!) So in retrospect if you look through TH-cam's entire history year by year it would be surprising that TH-cam has come this far in so little time! 😅🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉
Especially sexual ones.
Well actually that isn't quite true and the reason why might surprise you. See it all started with the rise of yellow journalism in the 1920's, thanks to an editor at the.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
Hahaha got ya with some clickbait 😁😁
@@MrTAGGER88I hate you so much I got baited and I use TH-cam on the TV so I can’t see the rest of your comment without having to click directly and enter inside the comment so you literally clickbaited me
As an astronomer, I fully approve of the division of clickbait into "Type I" and "Type II"
Hey, love your videos
Hey!! I watch your videos
What's the link with being an astronomer 😅
@@latitzouri Astronomers divide supernovas into 2 types: Type I supernova, Type II supernova.
@@latitzouri Type I and Type II Supernova
I just wish TH-cam would add an A/B feature so creators didn't have to spend the first few hours/days babysitting their videos to try to achieve a good CTR.
is there an api for this?
I mean there is always the youtube api so an A/B feature can already easily be implemented using it. A couple python lines in AWS Lambda do the job fine.
It’s not the fact that these clickbait TH-camrs make a lot of money or fame, it’s that they steal a lot of their viewers’ time with irrelevant material, then the actual content you clicked for is at the end of the video. My main focus is the viewers’ time, that’s why I want to stop this clickbait epidemic.
sorry for my ignorance but what is an a/b feature? i used to upload videos in the early 2000's and have no idea what that means.
@@clickbaitpolice1750 Do you have a proposed alternative that is likely to engage viewers and promote time spent on the site?
"I want to make science documentaries in youtube that puts broadcast to shame"
And to be honest, you have. It made me reflect on how have I got into interesting science topics in the last 8 years, and its been mostly through your videos. And thats a lot because I just graduated as a biologist! It is thanks to your videos and videos from others like Michael from Vsauce that I keep finding my passion about science.
So thank you. I always go back to some of your videos (What is not random and Our Greatest Delusion) because they are truly inspirational. You are the Carl Sagan of a generation!
I actually watched a TV documentary recently and it was absolute garbage compared to what I saw on TH-cam for the same topic.
After getting used to good TH-cam creators, traditional broadcast educational material has been basically ruined for me. The cuts, excessive editing, overly dramatic acting and more things I only just 'feel' really make them less enjoyable to watch these days.
As an example - I used to love Mythbusters but I can't go back and rewatch it because there's only a few minutes of real content and the rest is just hype and acting.
This is so true - some TH-cam creators are just outstanding and just the best in the world - bigger budgets don’t help there either (if you don’t have the talent)
This channel doesn’t make Clickbait, it doesn’t constantly ask to like, subscribe and leave a comment. That’s why I’ve subscribed, always like, and leave comments 😊😊😊
Man this was so great to watch. Legitbait is hard when you’re overthinking. How can one get in touch with these title and thumbnail experts? 😅🤝
Thought you died 😳🥺
You dont need a clickbait when your smacking kids on r6s with a POTATO!! Title smacking kids in r6s with a potato!!!!!
@@tyriekovco711 had baby vid soon
@@BasicallyHomeless lol congrats!
Misder Hummus is here?
A trend on TH-cam, that I really like, are videos where the title might be clickbait-y, but the thumbnail "fixes" the curiosity gap. So, while the title alone might be clickbait, the title+thumbnail is legitbait.
A lot of Veritasium videos are good examples:
The Biggest Myth in Education (thumbnail answers what the myth is: "You are not a visual learner")
Backspin Basketball Flies Off Dam (the thumbnail answers why: "Magnus effect")
Without the "answers" in the thumbnail, I would probably call the above titles clickbait, but with them, I don't think they're clickbait.
Or "The simplest math problem no one can solve" with thumbnail "3x + 1" which would have been way too clickbaity otherwise. I agree, it's a great approach.
Or i think the best so far: Do salt lamps work?
no.
Adam Neely does this a lot. Title asks question, thumbnail answers question.
It doesn't feel exploitative to me, which I appreciate a lot.
❗SERCH ADITYA RATHORE-HE ALSO MAKES INFORMATIVE CONTENT LIKE VERTASIUM
Veritasium is a man of his word.
Veritasium: I'm bad at clickbait
Also Veritasium: Doesn't say ft. Mr Beast
Ur right, any other youtuber would hv milked the opportunity to say they had MrBeast in their video
I have no idea who that guy was.
I would've skipped the video if it had a ft. *random guy* unless it's some other youtuber I like a lot. And I think I'm not alone in this approach to that kind of clickbait.
So it's a choice between:
- trying to attract everyone outside the set of people who watch veritasium with let's call it a "normal" probability of success.
- trying to attract *random guy's* audience with a higher than "normal" probability of success, but everyone else with a lower than "normal" probability.
Good luck estimating the probabilities to figure out a better choice)
@@Steelrat1994I don't get why u would skip a video if it had a "random guy" featuring, even if I don't know who the youtuber is , I would still check what the video is about without just skipping.
I could not stop watching this video. You have opened my eyes to the very thing missing from my titles and thumbnails. As you have demonstrated in the video and with your thumbnail and title, it suddenly becomes clear to me. Very much appreciated, thank you.
It's been really interesting watching the title and thumbnail of this video change! Loved the video
Same! Was here first at something along the lines of "im bad at clickbait" , now back (8/19/21 3:44 CST) and its "Clickbait is Unreasonably Effective"
But I think same thumbnail? I'm hoping there will be a follow-up from Veritasium that goes over all the titles/thumbnails.
potatoes
Look! It's my favorite creator couple on on one of my favorite channels ❤️
The first one I saw was “the truth about clickbait”
Veritasium basically exposing himself is the most truthful thing I've seen on TH-cam.
No one could expose me so I did it myself
And showing his respect for us, proves he deserves our respect.
Personally. If a thumbnail has a person doing that fake surprise beta open mouth face. Out of spite I mark it uninterested.
I am still watching the video, does he speak about how YT is segregating the people and putting them in echo chambers? How it is making people impulsive quick to reject information from other points of views? How when they are given opposite information, they reinforce their thoughts with the information from their feeds? We're all screwed and we don't know it yet...
Yeah until he says he doesn't do it for money
I like “Trickbait” for the misleading
Legitbait…. That’s a good one!
Didn't expect you here
@@billcipher2144 I always watch Ve!
This is not bad! I like it, will forward to Brady for approval.
@@veritasium Thank you Derek! I appreciate it
Also thought trickbait would sound great for misleading
I was just surfing through your videos for something to watch and thinking to my self “I really appreciate how he doesn’t use clickbait” then I landed on this video.
_"We need to talk about clickbait..."_
_"I spent 19 MINUTES on a ladder, and here's what happened."_
_"HOW HIGH DID I CLIMB??? feat. MrBeast"_
_"This secret is costing you millions of views"_
Have my first like. I'll be here at 1K.
You're hired 😁
Great idea tu put clickbait on a video about clickbait
LMAO\
Insurance companies must hate you
Damn.
Honestly this should just be an AB testing feature that TH-cam offers to their creators. You submit multiple pairs of thumbnails and for limited time TH-cam will show all of those to same number of people. Then after the initial experiment only the pair with most impressions is shown to any new people.
That's a great idea - it would help level the playing field for smaller and less experienced creators.
Facebook ads have A/B testing. I wonder why TH-cam doesn’t
That's a great idea
I’m pretty sure that is a thing, unless I’ve just seen creators manually change their thumbnails. I have absolutely seen different thumbnails for the same recently uploaded videos.
Looks like Mike doesn't watch the videos that he's commenting on.
Glad to see the Magnus Effect is still helping generate some content for you Derek haha
#44 love your stuff guys
Epic
Oh you’re the guy who also uploaded that clip iirc
What happens when a spinning basketball is thrown off the dam!
I never knew Veritasium's name until now, learn something new every day
I love the humility in pointing out that titling a video "Strange Applications of the Magnus Effect" was not a great marketing strategy. That being said, you are killing it on the viewership front and this is one of my favourite channels!
I love how he just narrates his videos from random places like a ladder
I thought the same. Initially I asked myself, “why doesn’t he do slides and then narrate them?” But that cannot show his face easily. I think his setup, although totally strange and non-conventional, is easy to do with minimal amount of work.
That ladder is what got me to click
"I'm terrible at making clickbait." Really? "Risking My Life To Settle A Physics Debate" was an immediately clickable title.
Edit: This is a compliment, not an accusation.
Yeah, I didn't come up with that - that was the team.
@@veritasium Hi Man...
@@veritasium Love your Videos.... From past 6 years
@@veritasium bruh
@@veritasium what was the original title going to be?
I am impressed with how he stood on a ladder staring at a projector light for hours filming this. I would be blind and suffering from a recent fall if I were Derek. PS: I really like the visual learner vid.
Yeah totally me too
I’m still asking... “But why?” “Is it for the legitbait?”
When people talk about clickbait, they mean they're being lied to. That's really what it's about.
This guy stared into a projector for 20 minutes for our education
Respect.
Yeah about that....
i hope its a joke...but we have 2 hrs class using projectors.....
@@tonyfalapatt1308 Are you in the beam of the projector? Because it's like trying to ignore someone shining a flashlight at you. Otherwise... that's a nice projector. I just don't understand why he couldn't put everything two feet lower and stand on the ground, rather than using a ladder.
@@mal2ksc Novelty, especially for long-term subscribers.
All true, and it is why newspapers used to hire good sub editors to think up catchy headlines for articles. Journalists often protested that the headlines didn't reflect the content of what they wrote, but the catchy headlines got the readers for their copy - Rob
And then we stopped reading past the end of the headline...
If the headline doesn't say what the article is about, I simply won't read it. There are too many headlines like that, ain't nobody got time for that.
But what I noticed is that if there are numbers in the headline, those numbers will be different in the lede, and different again in the article.
For example:
Thousands dead!
In a catastrophy last week, hundreds have died…
… The two people who have died…
I also noticed that in newspaper forums, the commenters are usually refering to the headline, not the article. Sometimes I wonder why journalists even bother.
@@csn583 I will not read the whole article just to know what's it about. The headline should make it clear what happened I don't have the time to read the whole thing
Truly a travesty.
Ok rob
“The Strange Applications of the Magnus Affect” could’ve been “I threw a ball off a dam! You WONT believe what happens!!!”
(Gone sexual) *mouth agape*
Add a “thumbnail face” and I would never have found out what happens.
Type 2 Clickbait.
Sounds like a 3-year-old
@@perikholt3395 Liar
(I can tell you) The difference in every one of the example videos shown, THE PHOTO.
It was the different photo (MUCH more than the title) that made all the difference.
[a basketball with two arrows] vs [leaning over a dam+ the white path it will take+ arrows]
[half photo you+ Ions Good For You?] vs [central photo of you+ "NO"]
It is the photo, not the title.
The fact that I avoided this video for three days just to finally click it proves that clickbait always wins.
Right with you
Same
the thumbnail changed at some point in the past few days. I don't remember exactly what it said before but it wasn't "Here's the proof" like it is now
@@harleyspeedthrust4013 for me it's "Clickbait is unreasonably effective" right now o_O
Exactly! “Here’s the proof” is exactly the point where I, and I assume, most of us, will have finally clicked... ;)
"Why is clickbait everywhere? Well... because it works."
*Reality is often disappointing.*
I feel you
@@veritasium to be really honest, i love your videos so much that even if you upload a 30 min video with the title "i cant think of a title" i'd still happily jump to click it! ;D
Banner advertisement worked very well once. Few don't know how ugly it ended. Recent youtube's policies make me open platform less and less. 2 unskippable adds for a freaking minute...
See also spam and scams in general. They work.
Yes. That's why many people prefer to spend their time elsewhere than in reality.
"I wanna make science documentaries on youtube that put broadcast to shame", this is the reason why I watch Veritasium, love the confidence and motivation. It's also inspiring me to start my own channel
Yes, This and not amazing clickbait guy.
He's in a class of his own. love the channel
Unsub or block is a nice way to fight against low quality clickbaits.
I was just thinking I hope you do more meta videos about the platform! You have such a helpful perspective using all the science!
Yo James!
🟢SERCH ADITYA RATHORE-HE ALSO MAKES INFORMATIVE CONTENT LIKE VERTASIUM
although when Mr. Beast's Video titled something like "If You click on this video, You get a chance to win 1M dollars" I never ended up watching the video. The Click bait made me not want to watch the video.
Agreed!
Funny how he interviewed Mrbeast - He's the one who does most clickbait on youtube!!!!!!!!
'How kindness can kill.' is the title of our video about effective altruism. It's fairly clickbaity, but people are watching and donating to the most effective charities. I often struggle to know where the line is. If people are happy after watching the video, does that mean it's ok? I don't know. Brilliant video as always Derek.
I feel that as long as you are not lying, you can be as clickbaity as you want. Your title clearly is interesting, showing a contrast between the words you are using, a paradox that interests people. If in your video you effectively explain why altruism can be dangerous, the title effectively communicates part of the content of the video, in an interesting way.
If you phrased it differently, like "Kindness kills", which is almost the same but very different in the meaning, you would have made a false title (because kindness does not kill usually), That is a lie, so a bad kind of clickbait.
Main thing is never leave people feeling like the title lied to them.
@@giannipiccioni8411 Thanks. It might be that we worry more about this than most viewers, who just want to see good videos, though it's easy to be blinded by incentives. It's not the money (effective altruism groups asked to sponsor videos, and I asked them to keep the money and made a video anyway) - it's the impact. Arguing against political correctness, Stephen Fry said "It's more important to be effective than to be right - in the sense of self-righteous etc." I think there's also a risk of limiting positive impact to save our own embarrassment. And I've just realised that yes, we worry too much about this - I'm rambling - Mr Beast is right : )
Best unintentional self-promotion comment ever, well played.
@@philippschreier398 Yes I think that's good, but what if it delivers something slightly different, which they are equally happy with? Can a nice surprise be a good thing?
This was fantastic! I also want to acknowledge how much time you probably spent on that ladder.
Right, i was thinking "I hope he wore shoes with thick soles for this"
Nevermind, just noticed he was not wearing shoes at all
He was risking his life and health to make this video.
He also might have a burnt spot in his eyes from the projector
@@000Gua000 Only 9% life risking, so it might not meet his metric, lol. :)
I like that the titles of your best videos sound a lot like good titles for newspaper articles... you're just using good journalism rules. Thank you for sharing this.
"I don't want to make Vlogs I want to make science documentaries on TH-cam that put broadcast to shame"
-Veritasium
(Best description of his channel)
"We need to talk about clickbait"
"Clickbait is unreasonably effective"
Trying to get me to watch the same video twice, huh, I see how it is.
lol he practices what he preaches :D
^ Almost a wooosh
Am I part of an experiment?
Hehe
The first title was better imo
Alternate Title: *TH-camr Overwhelmed by Clickbait Guilt, Nearly Dies Jumping From Ladder*
Let's calculate how much he risked his life.
@Leonard Ney *GONE WILD* *GONE SEXUAL!?!??!* 5000 DOLLAR GIVE AWAY !!
Now I HAVE to watch the whole video!
i think its a bit too long...
@@o.o9709 mr beast colab.
Imo "asteroids: earths biggest threat" along with that yhumbnail is by far the best of them.
The importance of titles and thumbnails have increased now more than ever in the history of TH-cam. No doubt.
As my toes.
360 fortnite roblox kidnapped crying in basement spongebob minecraft your mom is pregnant get round house kicked in the back halo reach pewdiepie epic games twitter freestyle amongus.
just alone due to the overwhelming mass of videos uploaded every minute
if the thumbnail dont catch me i dont spend any second watching it
Also so many verified channels randomly commenting on famous TH-camr videos, Just to get traction. I’m obviously not talking about you…
🇧🇩🇧🇩🇧🇩❤️❤️
“Surprising” is an overused clickbait that people are desensitised to; this means that people have developed an immune response to unconsciously ignore such bait.
especially ''surprisingly isnt''
6:57 This point still stands true though. The people that ignore clickbait don’t matter. It’s the people that fall for it that do, and more of them come over time.
@@laymankeepitbrief 15:36
@@had0j La bumba sticker Funeral Home in New Castle
I think you mean DEsensitized
“I want to make science documentaries on TH-cam that put broadcast to shame.” Depending on the network, you’re already there. Keep it up!
amen, i cant watch most documentarys anymore as they just convey a 15 min vertassium video within 45 min of voicover boringness
I never thought of a good title as _clickbait._ For me, clickbait is when you bait people with something that's supposedly happening inside the video and then either have that something be a ridiculously small fraction of the video that has no meaning and quality at all or not have it in the video at all. Clickbait can also be when there's a title that states that something extraordinary happens, like *"Brother PUNCHES sister IN THE FACE until she BLEEDS"* and then you see a video of a dude accidentally tripping and hitting his sister, who's lip bleeds a little tiny bit, but not very much.
The Og title was “We Need To Talk About Clickbait” it’s now “Clickbait is Unreasonably Effective”
Yep
....funny thing is I've seen the thumbnail for a few days. Tonight I clicked it. Why? I don't know 😭😆
@@mthlay15 same bro haha
@@mthlay15 omg same
And the new one is more descriptive and probably performs better
Why hasn’t TH-cam implemented A/B testing for titles and thumbnails? Seems like a no brainer to help professional creators save time and headaches
Why should the dominant channels get more help being dominant?
@@csn583 ye
@@csn583 true, but it would still greatly help smaller creators.
@@csn583 Dominant channels have people do that manually, like Veritassium does. One-man channels would win more from automation here.
I hope because of ethic reasons
I feel this is something AI will be terrifyingly good at.
Oh yeah, black box problems are the bread an butter of AI software
Especially if TH-cam allowed for A/B testing.
Type II clickbait, yes I agree. but not Type I clickbait
Or it'll get a little bad data and we get an amazing shitpost algaritham
I guess so probably if they send the AI to mars they would just make their own colony and just become independent on themselves
While growing up , we come under the pressure of 'knowing too much, and there's no more need of it'. If destroys our curiosity to be a learner. Thank you for this enlightening video.
He calls it "a scientific problem"
Derek you really are a true scientist, problem solver, teacher & an inspiration to many people.
Thank you for everything.
"I'm terrible at click bait"
Yet I'm here
He makes good content
Well we clicked on the notification, not the thumbnail.
@@HmHm-xz9nv True, I watch Veritasium no matter what he posts. Thats the power of getting true subscribers. You get some constant views, and then u can aim for more random people
and yet millions of others are not
You are but a single data point. Amongst possibly millions of people who may or may not have clicked on the video.
I played with thumbnails and titles over the past few months and I can tell you it makes a huge difference, as explained in this video!
But are the results coming from "better" titles, or simply the act of changing the titles. This seemed unclear to me in Veritasium's video because the chart suddenly showed an influx of new views when the title changed, but how can we know whether it's because the new title was better or simply because it was new?
Yeah, that's a good question, @@nihilozero, if by it you mean the thumbnail too. Because that might produce the "Oh, here's one from this guy that I haven't seen yet!" effect, even for people who'd still find the new name and pic boring, simply because they like just about everything that guy posts. I wonder how a study specifically about that might be conducted.
@@nihilozero personally I saved it to my watch later as soon as I got the notification so I could watch it later. Probably after he's already done all the changing and stuff.
@@HelloKittyFanMan.
"Oh, here's one from this guy that I haven't seen yet!"
CLICK
"WHAT?!...I've seen this one already!"
UNSUB
So you know how bad is to name video I DIED IN MINECRAFT and thumbnail minecraft bedrock logo?
TH-cam never suggested the "Salt lamps" video to me until you changed the title to what it is now. Something of a confirmation to what you're saying.
"We need to talk about clickbait"
> No red circles or arrows in clickbait thumbnail
Yes.
there is a red arrow tho
Don't you see the red arrow?
@@ThreeMountainsStudio he probably just changed the thumbnail lol
"Clickbaits: How to get good at TH-cam" could also work..
> No Mr. Beast in the thumbnail
Never clicked faster than this. This is the best clickbait
Me too
Yes
Same
Same
Me too
Best legitbait title ever: "The ingenious design of the aluminum beverage can"
best video on this site
@@kashu7691 Anna Capone bodyguard
Engineering guy's?
@@chan625 yes you come in this is marvelous Anna in the bathroom of the hotel room you have to jump into the Russian about changing Smith Sam Smith's about this peanuts nuages about the tombstone that I could find intuited highlighted peanuts
@@walidfakhfakh3660 are you ok
This video mad me realize why I click on less and less videos from Veritasium and its increasing clickbait title and thumbnails.
Building the curiosity gap takes time, so overall there is less and less to learn and the video length rises.
I like how he has the high ground.
Well, he thinks he does... :(
Pays 'his' bills. lol
Class G2V Stellar Classification (Sun)
Lisa Simpson on a stage energy for sure
just a sign of dominance
*vietnam flashbacks*
It’s the same problem when teaching in a classroom setting. You can be teaching great content, but if you don’t package it in a way that is engaging, your will lose your students’ interest and they won’t retain it.
Mr Beast’s face on teaching material? Maybe we don’t have to go so far, but this video made me think about that too, how school material is often not engaging.
I don't disagree that there is an important issue embedded in this, but the problem being talked about here is not the problem of being engaging enough. It's the problem of misrepresenting yourself for the sake of being engaging, and that isn't a problem that teachers really tend to have, aside from narrow cases like the classic "underwater basket weaving" that hypothetically exist to give out easy A's to college athletes. Most teachers teach in a setting where students know what to expect, and are there in spite of that - the teacher doesn't need to trick people through the door.
ake them to your grandmother☹️😲🤑🙃😕😔😓
and do not run off the path☠️💀👺👹👿😈☻
@Deborah Ajao That's easy. Multimedia is just inherently a better teaching platform than a lecture is, because it communicates on more levels, and also because it allows for pausing and backing up if you didn't catch something. The people who say this are people who have relied on lectures for learning, and it has failed them for the obvious reason that lectures are a poor way to teach concepts. School has historically combined lecture and homework and said that the mix gives you what you need, to learn. And it works. But if you don't do enough homework and rely on lectures, then yeah, obviously well-done multimedia is going to be better.
Engagement isn't really an important distinction there, because the engagement in a classroom setting comes from the fact that a student "has" to be there, either because they paid for it or because someone is making them go. Where engagement matters is when considering people who wouldn't bother learning about the material at all, without access to the video. Those are the people who are getting something they wouldn't otherwise get. But those are people that teachers basically never see anyway, so the experience of a traditional educator doesn't really correlate.
**The Clickbait Paradox**
**Here's how you're getting Dupechuted**
**Man stands on ladder for almost 20mins, here's why**
The ladder one is great 🤣🤣🤣
At no point in this video did he explain why he was on a ladder. jebaited.
@@Joe-nb3fs : he's on the "ladder to success" - oh why couldn't i resist; and why am i actually laughing ... ??!!
@@Joe-nb3fs I think you mean dupechuted!
Gonna try adding "dupechuted" to my vocab
Being so eloquent, while on a ladder, while having a projector shining in your eyes is a remarkable quality. Very impressive!
The most memorable clickbait I remember was: _"this young genius proved 20 nobel prize winners wrong!"_ I have no idea of where the stupid link led, because I didn't click.
So it didn't work for you.
Then it was not bait
@@dianeridley9804 wrong type of bait for that person, but no doubt very effective bait for a lot of people.
The problem with that title is that they forgot to add, "And then the murders began."
The most memorable clickbait I remember was the TH-cam video called "the greatest paralympic scandal" or something like that and the thumbnail was literally just the words "They weren't disabled." I clicked on it.
First title: We need to talk about clickbait
second title: Clickbait is Unreasonably Effective
I only saw the second one, and I don't think I would necessarily have clicked on the first one. First one has an ambiguous and almost negative tone, which, I think, would have made me think that the video would be about 'what is wrong with clickbait' (something I already saw a lot) in contrast to the second one which have a more neutral and pragmatic tone and made me think the video will be about the phenomenon as a whole with an interesting way of seeing it (including data with the thumbnail).
I only ended up clicking after the title change 😂🤣
🌚
i clicked on the first one (it was in my subs) but didn't get around to watching it until after the title changed. wonder how many other people this happened to
Saw the first title, didn't have time to watch it at the time. When I returned it has changed.
To be honest, I specifically didn't click on the "The simplest math problem no one can solve" video, because "no one can solve/do this problem/challenge" is such a widely used clickbait trope, I have been conditioned to always avoid it. I didn't even realize it was a Veritasium video.
I almost didn't click on it for the exact same reason! And then I realized it was Veritasium so I watched it haha
I like anti-clickbait. It gives me the feeling that someone actually has a good explanation and is not just trying to get my attention for nothing
I really appreciate people who are willing and so able to share the secrets of their creative processes like this.
It's been pretty much open knowledge for years now, but this is the best and most detailed I've seen it explained.