YouTube Tests New Channel Content Personalization to Help Maximize Viewer Engagement

YouTube’s looking to provide more ways to engage channel visitors, by customizing the way that your uploaded content is displayed based on each users’ preferences.  

For example, YouTube’s currently developing separate tabs for ‘Videos’, ‘Shorts’ and ‘Live’ uploads, segmenting each content format into its own element on your channel page. Users who then tap through to your page from Shorts, for example, would be routed to the Shorts-specific page, better aligning with their viewing habits.

As you can see in this example, ‘Videos’ and ‘Shorts’ are in their own area, while ‘Live’ clips, if a channel has created any, will live in their own segment as well.

The update aligns with other recent changes in YouTube’s content sorting, which enable users to more specifically filter content in the ‘Subscriptions’ tab, for example, into Shorts and regular video uploads.

With Shorts becoming a bigger element of the YouTube experience, it makes sense for the app to provide more ways for users to consume Shorts content specifically, which is also more in line with the TikTok experience, enabling you to scroll through a constant stream of Shorts only.

That relates to channel management too, and the additional sections could make it easier to keep viewers around, helping to enhance connection and community.

YouTube’s also looking to implement additional personalization elements for channel visitors, including displaying content based on a users’ previous watch history (on your channel and elsewhere on YouTube), topic affinity, or the languages they speak.

As per YouTube:

“This could be especially effective if your channel has multiple topics, languages, or content formats. [The channel display] could, for instance, be a ‘Recommended for you’ section, which could feature the content the viewer is most interested in, which would be tailored to their viewing preference. For instance, when a viewer started watching a video, but didn’t finish, this could be something they would be interested in continue watching. You would be able to add this section to your channel page.”

More personalized channel experiences could help to encourage expanded viewing behavior, and it could have a big impact on total watch time and engagement among your visitors.

Which is why these updates are significant – they’re not adding anything new, as such, but by better curating your channel for each individual user, based on their preferences, that could keep them around for longer, and increase the likelihood of them becoming a subscriber.

YouTube says that all of these changes will be rolled out in testing soon, with a full launch to follow.