SEO as an idea is still very important, it's just done VERY different. Things like tags are 99.99% useless for helping your video be served higher in search for a specific term. Titles matter a bit more, but for a different reason. Rather than an algorithm indexing the keywords and sorting it that way it's more about recognition for an actual human viewer and what viewers who clicked on your video also watched. Googles systems are smart enough at this point to scan the actual video content itself and understand what the video is about rather than relying on antiquated SEO practices (in my opinion and with what I've seen through my work) If you made a Minecraft video, someone who just watched 10 other Minecraft videos is likely going to be served your video weather or not it says Minecraft in the title due to Google scanning and recognizing the video topic. But none of that matters if a human viewer who see's the video doesn't recognize the topic. So in short... titles matter to clearly communicate your video ideas to human audiences, not algorithms... and tags are useless.

I think there's a really interesting video here with super strong packaging. I know this person is the owner of the property but making a more Ryan Trahan/Entertainment video about "owning" or "creating" the property feels like it sits in a weird middle ground in terms of audience. Which audience is this for? I'd use that information to inform the packaging and direction of the video. For an "entertainment" audience: Are they all IP/Movie themed? If so something like "I Spent 24 Hours In Movie Themed Airbnb's" creates a really strong video structured around visiting ~3 of them, and also lends itself to a strong A/B test featuring the different properties to see which one viewers are most interested in. For a more educational Airbnb Arbitrage audience: Something like "How My Willy Wonka Airbnb Made $xxx In Only 1 Year", or "Are "Gimmick" Airbnb's Worth It?" feels more suited towards that audience. Those are my thoughts, happy to hear others!

@Nic Stanich You can still place manual ads but if YT deems them Interruptive they won't play, that term is also pretty nebulous and their system is sketchy at best at detecting what is and isn't interruptive. I think that's the major concern, certain verticals also don't lend themselves to a slower paced narrative structure with breaks built it so those creators are now concerned about having to potentially unlearn all the optimizations they made previously for retention to adapt to this ads system.

@Nic Stanich You can opt out of turning on automatic ad placement, but that's not the issue anyone has with this, it's the judgement of ad slots as interruptive which prevents ads from being shown. I took a look at ad slots on one of our most recent videos for a pretty well established channel and 7/8 ad slots were deemed interruptive. I don't think this is nearly as much of a "doomsday" situation that channels are making it out to be, but it's definitely something that's going to change the way certain creators and niches make content.

Hey Ben! My thoughts are it depends more on the new type of content, if the content is going to stay similar in scope, niche and audience (just improve in quality), then I'd keep the channel. If the content is changing enough to where it no longer appeals to the original audience of the channel, I'd recommend starting a new channel. Some clients or brands also might just not want all that older content featured on their channel and looking so disconnected in type and style from the new stuff, so I'd factor that in as well. Todd loves to say that the algorithm "looks at each video individually and past video performance doesn't impact future video performance" (whether that's 100% true is debatable), but I've seen channels do a 180 and pop-off with proper ideation, packaging and content style. I think you can start strong and build momentum going forward with this same channel. If you go to your favorite Creators channel and sort by Oldest, odds are you'll see a TON of "junk content" there still live on the channel. That's just my thoughts! I'd love to hear what other people think!

General "Education" - https://www.youtube.com/@zackdfilms/shorts & https://www.youtube.com/@SeanAndreww/shorts Science - https://www.youtube.com/@veritasium/shorts & https://www.youtube.com/@kurzgesagt/shorts Chemistry - https://www.youtube.com/@NileRed/shorts Law - https://www.youtube.com/@LawByMike/shorts Baking - https://www.youtube.com/@benjaminthebaker/shorts Engineering - https://www.youtube.com/@EmilyTheEngineer/shorts College Productivity - https://www.youtube.com/@goharsguide/shorts History - https://www.youtube.com/@HistorybyMae/shorts I'd say these all fall way more in the "Edutainment" category than just straight education but they're crushing.