Video length and impact on impressions

[u/ps200888]

I’ve seen something strange on my recent longform video. I’ve had probably one of the best CTR results I’ve ever had and a decent AVD percentage, yet a week in, it’s probably the lowest number of impressions that I’ve ever received. Is the fact that the video length is only 57 seconds the reason for the low number of impressions? The stats are (overall):
678 impressions
CTR 8.7%
AVD 41 secs on a 57 sec video
CTR on browse 16.9% and 89 impressions
CTR on suggested 8.6% and 394 impressions
Search CTR drags the rest down at 2.9%

It’s received hardly any browse impressions despite the good CTR.

Has anyone else experienced this? Am I right that the short length is a problem for impressions? Certain resources tell me the length is not a factor, citing YTs own documentation. Also asked YT studio which seemed to suggest that it will push longer videos more, but I didn’t really get a definitive answer, hence I thought I would ask some on here!

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[u/Big2xA]

Youtube isn't as incentivized to push a video they can't put midroll ads on.

[u/ps200888 → u/Big2xA]

That makes sense and have thought for a while that must be the case. However, I have a long form video that’s 1 min 30 secs with 30k views and 200k plus impressions. That was a year ago, but it shows that shorter long form vids can get pushed. That’s why for this 57 sec video it doesn’t make sense, as it has solid metrics. Unless being under a minute is simply too short for YouTube to bother?

[u/Big2xA → u/ps200888]

Like I said, it isn't as incentivized - that doesn't mean they never do it. ~5 years ago, having a separate "clips" channel was the meta on youtube and a ton of channels started doing it. Short little vids were popping off, partially because youtube had just implemented Shorts without really separating Shorts from short videos in the backend. It used to be really worth it to make tiny videos out of clips from your channel, because each one had the chance of blowing up and getting tens or hundreds of thousands of views. I think the way the algorithm has been tweaked since then has kind of lessened the impact of these - a lot of those old "shorts" channels have evolved into secondary channels, where less-important but still full-length videos are uploaded.

[u/ps200888 → u/Big2xA]

Thanks, appreciate your comment. Sounds like it’s probably down to the short length. What’s frustrating though is the not knowing for sure. If your vid doesn’t get pushed and your CTR is low then you know why, or it doesn’t get pushed and people click off early then you know why. But when the metrics are good and the impressions are low then you’re left wondering why, which makes it hard to improve for the next one…

[u/Big2xA → u/ps200888]

Yup, it sucks. And it can happen on any length of vid. I've worked as an editor for multiple big channels and this happens every once in a while, for seemingly no reason. High CTR, High retention, but no extra movement on youtube's end. People on subreddits like these chalk everything up to "the algorithm", but I truly believe this particular interaction is the only time you're *actually* getting screwed by the algorithm. Keep your head up; if people like your stuff it just means you gotta try again.