Okay so, following on from last week’s ‘adapting to digital’ vibe, I wanted to discuss a technique that people sometimes call ‘serving the dessert first’. It’s one of the things that first stood out to me when I started making YouTube videos, coming from linear programmes.

Traditionally, audiences come to shows because of the promise of a pay-off. It’s something that TV has done well for decades - develop a format with built in pay-off, and bring the audience on a journey, for the promise of a reward. It works well for a business model that earns maximum gains from ad breaks at regular intervals and a reporting model that can never be super specific on how long people watched. (BARB isn’t able to accurately report on AVD)

For producers on YouTube, however - we’re incentivised by maximising Average View Duration (AVD). Getting the audience to the sponsored section, or through those pre-roll, mid roll and end roll ads. But you’re also competing against thousands, if not millions of other channels vying for the same eyeballs. So in the YouTube of today, it’s not enough to get viewers by the promise of a vague pay-off, or rely on just the notion of a format to be thing that brings audiences in.

For one, formats on YouTube should be far less rigid than telly formats, and so it’s hard to promise the same pay-off week in week out. So instead, it’s often easiest to show your audience what they’re going to get, in order to get the click and convert that click into a long watch time.

This is even more prominent in the age of thumbnail auto-plays. If a title and a thumbnail gets the audience to hover over your video impression, then the hook is your final opportunity to convince them to watch. And the easiest way to do that, is to serve them the sweetest, most decadent thing you can - your pay-off.

Lets look at some examples:

First look at the thumbnail and title; then watch the first 15 seconds of this epic video by Zac Alsop.

We’re teased in by a hunger games-esque disguise on the thumbnail, with a title promising to show us how Zac won the game of Hide and Seek. It’s an intriguing visual and title combo, so will get me at least to hover over the video.

But the magic comes in the hook; Zac not only shows you that his friend does in-fact win the Sidemen Hide & Seek, disguised as a paramedic – but he also shows footage of them going to the casino to put it all on red. The only thing he doesn’t show, is if they win, or don’t.

It’s a really juicy premise, with a shit load of the video spoiled for you already. But its such a compelling promise that I guarantee you this is at least a 3/10 in his performance rankings.

Let’s look at another option (but first a quick advert sorry - clicking on it helps me out! web viewers ignore)

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Okay so, lets look at this video about doors. (exciting right?)

This is the type of video I love. A single issue video about mysterious everyday thing. The title and thumbnail give you ENOUGH to say ‘hey I kind have always thought about that weird shape in doors’ or ‘you know what i’ve never even thought about it, but now i do’.

Within the first minute of this video, Rex Kruger tells us what it’s called, and why it exists. Time to click away right?

Wrong. Rex, much like Zac in the last video, then employs a simple but effective technique.

He’s hooked you in with a great title + thumbnail combo, engaged you, and answered the question quickly enough to satisfy and reinforce that you’ve clicked on the video for the right reasons, and then he opens another loop.

In this case it’s about wood bending and warping. For Zac in his vide it’s a loop about betting his winnings on red.

Check out this great diagram by Samir Chaudhry, in an episode of Creator Support.

Samir summarises this really well -

So, the next time you’re thinking about telling a story online, think about how you’re going to package it, what loop you want to instantly close, that will then allow you to open a new one (the meat of your video).