https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=6QG4n3-rKTs
They regularly have a half billion views, and are literally just someone opening Kinder Surprise toys and playing with them.
I have no idea why she loves them, but she just stays captivated until we put her back to Playschool.
For reference, she's never seen a Kinder Surprise in her life, or seen Frozen (or any Disney movie), or anything that would explain her draw to these videos.
As for the videos she does watch, at 1.5yrs old she already knew how to pick a new Related Video, or drag the slider back to rewatch a video, and will happily watch the same Playschool episode or Peppa Pig clip non stop for hours if we let her.
This new generation who have never known anything other than internet connected touch screens is truly fascinating to watch. Using tablets and phones is as natural as walking or playing.
I am getting sick of cleaning the TV though, since we can't manage to teach her that it's not touch screen!
On my tablets it looks like you have to swipe the related videos to the bottom then you have a comment section. So it's in the right area for how kids navigate youtube.
This looks like a toddler accidentally putting an SMS from an older sibling's device in the comment box.
I found out that the most-viewed Gaming video...is a random video of the game-of-the-movie Cars 2, due to kid viewership alone. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=urHuO7Zbhhw)
(I'd love to look at YouTube data again in light of the recent controversies, but it appears the API limitations have not changed since, which makes data scraping again a major hassle)
My pet theory is that these channels are monetized for automated click farms and they use children's content partly because kids will watch it, obfuscating the bot-clicks, and more-so that they can increase the safe threshold of bot-clicks/bot-views since children's viewing habits are to watch the same video repeatedly.
Indeed, it's worth having a poke around on youtube to have a look at the numbers on speed Lego builds and on little Lego animations.
It's a lot better than a most of the insipid, overly-twee bilge that is a lot of TV targeted at kids though.
Hopefully it can also lead into watching the amazing how to videos on youtube on almost everything from drawing, to fixing bikes to fiddling with Raspberry Pis though.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ipTJNNvW-Gw
NSFW (Swearing etc)
Seems weird that Google wouldn't figure out something so obvious... unless it were in their interest not to do so.
Kids are definitely able to navigate YouTube at young ages. My son at three could navigate to just about any arbitrary kid topic from any starting point. He could start from Daniel Tiger to 1980 Spider-Man to some weird Korean show with talking busses by surfing the recommendations.
Also, whatever your CTR is, it becomes a lot less meaningful if it turns out the majority of your users are illiterate and between the ages of 1 and 4.
I guess the money making scheme/scam here would be an advertising firm where you make commercials that incentivize viewers to put their finger on the video during the ad and appeal to toddlers.
An ad like "Put your finger on my face! Owww!" may deliver obscene "convergence" numbers. So long as the clients don't figure out the demographic of their viewers, you get the big bucks.
To me this seems bizarre, or maybe friends around my age are doing this and not talking about it—but lots of people around my age use a lot of Facebook, which I also find to be a waste of time and counter-stimulating.
It's a simple way to learn something new without the need of getting too involved with the material.
(For example, Geography Now! [0]has taught me a lot of things about other countries that I would never know about and it only requires like 15 minutes of my effort once per week.)
I consider it a nice way to lose some time when I'm not trying to focus on something.
On the other hand, I haven't watched a movie in months.
Unfortunately, YouTube's recommendations really don't do a lot in helping me discovering new things. I find myself putting in a lot more effort in finding what I would actually enjoy than I would have hoped to have with everything Google knows about me.
0 - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCmmPgObSUPw1HL2lq6H4ffA
While reading many of the comments on this thread I had trouble comprehending how anyone could spend so much time watching videos on YouTube. This aside made me realize that I probably spend five or six hours per week watching movies/tv shows. Pretty much the same thing.
I don't appreciate most of the YouTube personalities so it can sometimes be difficult to find good stuff, but then again I don't appreciate most television programming either. But I've realized that there is value in low-brow entertainment and not every single thing you watch has to be a great production with depth.
these people are able to make enough from youtube to either supplement a good professional income, or replace it altogether. which makes everyone, both producer and viewer, very happy indeed.
What I see is an industry of independent content developers who have gotten very close to the simplest form possible of "push button, receive dopamine."
As an upcoming parent, I feel I just need to not overreact and be moderate. Like TV in the 1900s, I just need to not rely on YouTube to babysit my kids.
Also, maybe they're advertising a credit card to the parent or guardian that's nearby. ;)
But more likely you are just going to do it wrong and your children will resent you for it and pledge they'll react better to the unforeseen challenges they will have raising their own children
I wouldn't be surprised they actually did connect the dots but it was in their best interest it says it was a middle age mother.
First time I've heard that one (surprisingly).
"To learn the moves, I watch the videos over and over and over... I've probably watched like, millions..." -- 12-year old girl learning to dance to dub step
One reason why putting those video ads in mobile games has proven so successful, is that kids will watch them non-stop in order to farm small amounts of in-game currency. After all, they can't make in app purchases without an adult's permission.
There's a lot of money to be made in having children watch hundreds of ads for that fraction-of-a-cent per view revenue.
Their cover was blown the same way each time, by children probably between 9 and 13.
It looked like a celebrity run in from an episode of I Love Lucy.
I really try to stay current in order to stay relevant, but both those times really illustrated the futility of such a pursuit:
1. There's YouTube celebrities.
2. They are just as legitimate as any other celebrity.
3. Children don't seem to distinguish or rank celebrities based on their medium.
4. YouTube is much closer to pop music; there's some mass appeal that has nothing to do with how clever or sophisticated it is.
The majority of people who recognize her are kids from Sunday school. It's hilarious and their parents have no idea what's going on.
That was formalized at Nickolodian after Blues Clues had to play the same episode multiple times in the week, mostly by accident since the show was more expensive than normal. It surprised everyone up and down the decision and production chain, especially since they were expecting failure due to lack of novelty.
Isn't repetitive behaviour a hint to autism?
What?
I've observed children on tablets ... they will watch the same video north of 100 times ... it's what kids do.
Then you look at the successful youtubers; people who do things like unwrap gifts or who make things I perplexingly am not entertained by. When I put it in the context of "this is watched by 5 year olds" everything makes sense.
I was talking to someone at a company that tracks these things, she said "no, it's actually women in their late 30s and 40s". This is even more evidence. They are on their mothers devices. It's not like women in their 40s are watching 60 variations of '5 little monkeys jumping on the bed'.
Multiple variations of this nursery rhyme have viewcounts over 100 million. (https://www.youtube.com/results?sp=CAM%253D&q=monkeys+on+the...).
I'm waiting for the commercials to be kids cereal and action figures, but somehow that hasn't happened yet. I get a Capital One credit card ad, logged out, in private mode, watching a nursery rhyme video. (hint hint, million dollar business right there).