Content Creation University
Auditing
YT-401 YouTube track Year Four YouTube Track

Retention Engineering & Analytics II

Deep retention analysis, packaging experiments, audience-graph diagnosis, iterating a format from data.

Lectures
8
Total runtime
3h 4m
Attendance minimum
1h 32m

Lecture Playlist

Ordered as a teaching progression, not by popularity. Attendance is recorded once half of a lecture has been watched.

  1. The YouTube Algorithms in 2025 — Explained! The system you are optimizing for: how recommendations weigh viewer signals Creator Insider 3 Platform official 21 min
  2. Key Moments in YTA: Introducing Typical Audience Retention! Reading the retention graph against benchmarks: Key Moments & typical audience retention Creator Insider 3 Platform official 5 min
  3. 6 Tips for Better Audience Retention! Retention engineering: turning graph diagnosis into edits, hooks, and pacing Creator Insider 3 Platform official 5 min
  4. Understand Your Viewership Trends: New & Returning Viewers in YouTube Analytics Audience-graph diagnosis: new vs returning viewers and what each trend prescribes YouTube Creators 3 Platform official 6 min
  5. A/B testing on YouTube Packaging experiments in Studio: Test & Compare for titles and thumbnails YouTube Creators 3 Platform official 4 min
  6. Stanford Webinar: Common Pitfalls of A/B Testing and How to Avoid Them Experimental rigor: designing and interpreting A/B tests without fooling yourself Stanford Online 2 Peer institution 57 min
  7. Stanford Seminar: Peeking at A/B Tests - Why It Matters and What to Do About It Advanced experimentation: the peeking problem and deciding when a test is done Stanford Online 2 Peer institution 62 min
  8. Practicum · working creator My Video Went Viral. Here's Why A working creator diagnoses one of his own breakout videos from his real analytics, putting Lecture 1's account of how the recommendation system weighs viewer signals and Lecture 5's packaging lever into practice on live channel data Veritasium P Practitioner 24 min

Every course reserves one practicum seat, listed last and marked P. It is filled by someone who has shipped the work — here, Veritasium — because the university lectures establish why something works and the practicum shows it being done under real constraints.

Enrolment

Start a transcript

Auditing keeps nothing. Enrolling records which lectures you have attended and which examinations you have cleared, so the university can tell you where you stand.

Signing in only carries your progress between devices. Everything is stored locally either way, and you can return to auditing at any time.