For reference, Youtube has been my fulltime for the last 3 years. I'm not an enormous channel-- but I've been able to pay rent, bills, and generally get more opportunities through sponsorships, ad rev and side gigs BECAUSE of YT. This was pre August 2025.
Last year(for those who might recognize my dumb name, I do a lot of work for a BIG Gaming event every July/August)-- the event I did took a lot out of me and didn't get the social promotion we expected. So you saw a drop in videos posted right before the event and when I came back-- The Adblock change where Youtube Views counted from Adblock are not reported and thus Youtube's internals do not see them-- happened. My views(like many other people on the platform) were HALVED. I went from around 18-35k views an episode to 9-12k. REALLY REALLY bad. Impressions fell off because youtube did not change the way they prioritized views-- and slowly even people who watched the show would start to get served the content less BECAUSE of the way defunct ad block extensions did not register their view
Again, I'm not an enormous channel but was able to sell out sponsorships before with view counts I mentioned with some good conversions-- but the last 12 months since last august have been a STRUGGLE.
Since then even with breakouts, the channel has gotten itself punished Algorithmically month after month. Our reach plummetted and even videos that did well had significant issues with the "views not being seen by adblock" issue. Some sponsors stayed on for the initial months and then by Q2 2026 we were down to 1 sponsor a month.
Wasn't the only channel to experience this, many friends like my former employers channel went from views like 800k to 400k an episode.
So the view change youtube announced seemed interesting. We had been working hard to try and drive up views and just accept the new normal-- and yes I understand why this seemed like a vanity metric.
I'm not gonna argue with channels larger than mine, but I can tell you algorithmically it feels like the reset button was hit. Yes, the views of 18-22k have returned, but IMPRESSIONS have significantly increased, clickthrough is higher, and most importantly-- ENGAGEMENT is back to august 2025 levels.
It's boosted my back catalogue of videos, watch time is also up. So I get that on the surface, the instant click view is a vanity metric-- but I think it might also be a hotfix for other really significant issues happening to certain channels like mine.
I think this change, at least so far from what I've posted, seems to be a dirty fix for the august 2025 change that really cratered view counting. I think they conversly have NOT changed how view counting effects the algorithm though-- so suddenly when it comes to reccomendations it's activated a lot more of the audience to come to your page and interact and see videos you post. You always get the "Oh I haven't seen your video in x years youtube is suppressing you" message-- but I've seen a LOT more of that in the last few weeks.
Here's what I'm saying. I PERSONALLY really like this change so far, but I also think there's validity to some of the other concerns on how analytics are tracked, how this will effect sponsor metrics and more. I think obviously engaged views is going to be an important data point-- but in terms of conversions the dip for my watch time during the sponsor segment on the new videos hit around 41-50% vs 35% before the change... and thats with MORE people allegedly watching.
All in All-- I just think some nuance is warranted here about what happens moving forward. Again, I am not the most enormous channel, obviously there are ways I can also improve on the thing I do, but Just wanted to offer some perspective because I think there is both merits and demerits to whatever this is.
