Why Video Production Agencies Need to Rethink Strategy After YouTube’s Metric Changes
YouTube has recently overhauled the way it surfaces video content, eliminating the once-prominent Trending page and introducing new AI-driven systems for personalised discovery. This change, rolled out in July 2025, reflects a growing reliance on individual user preferences and satisfaction signals rather than broad popularity metrics. At the same time, key indicators like watch time and shares have shifted in their relative weight. While both have always mattered to an extent, their relationship is now being recalibrated in more complex ways through machine learning systems. The shift is especially significant for brands and organisations working with professional video production agencies, as the criteria for content visibility and performance are no longer centred solely on passive metrics. These changes are not superficial. They signal a foundational movement in how content is assessed, ranked, and surfaced. For businesses producing video content, understanding these shifts is critical, not just to optimise performance but to remain relevant within a platform that is now operating with different logic. Let’s take a closer look at how this metric shift changes expectations and demands for branded video production.
Structural Changes to YouTube’s Discovery System
The Removal of the Trending Page and Rise of Personalised Feeds
In July 2025, YouTube officially retired its Trending tab across most regions. In its place, the platform now prioritises a range of personalised discovery features based on user history, device type, and behavioural indicators. These changes follow the integration of generative AI systems trained on a mixture of watch behaviour and satisfaction surveys, shifting the focus towards sustained engagement and perceived viewer value.
The implications are significant for video production agencies creating content for clients that expect discoverability. Without a centralised visibility feature like Trending, videos must now qualify for exposure based on their performance within tightly tuned, user-specific environments.
Redefining Views in Shorts and the Shift Toward ‘Engaged Views’
As of March 2025, YouTube adjusted how it counts views for Shorts. All plays, including scroll-past replays, now count as views. However, the metric that carries actual performance value in algorithmic decision-making is ‘engaged views’, those where the viewer actively watches for a duration long enough to be considered intentional.
This change creates a dual-layer metric system. A high view count may not indicate meaningful interaction. For businesses producing short-form content, often as part of wider campaign strategies, this means understanding how visual pacing, format, and relevance interact to earn engaged, rather than passive, consumption.
Elevation of Shares in Discovery Algorithms
Alongside retention, shares are now gaining prominence as a measure of cross-platform appeal. Unlike likes or comments, a share represents a decision to send the video beyond the platform, whether privately or on other social media channels. This behaviour suggests deeper viewer alignment with the message or utility of the content.
For organisations working with video production agencies, this shift introduces a performance layer that cannot be controlled through distribution tactics alone. The video’s format and messaging must be designed to support this type of user behaviour from the outset.
Moving Beyond Passive Metrics: What This Means in Practice
Watch Time as a Performance Minimum
Watch time remains essential. For longer videos especially, YouTube’s systems still rely heavily on whether a viewer stays for a significant percentage of the content. However, this is no longer the only determinant. Watch time now functions as a baseline requirement, necessary but not sufficient.
This has implications for brands producing corporate explainers, training modules, or promotional pieces. If those videos are structured around single-message narratives, they may not meet the platform’s growing preference for videos that maintain attention while also stimulating further sharing activity.
Shares as Indicators of Viewer Satisfaction and External Relevance
Shares do more than signal viewer enjoyment. They reflect a specific kind of decision: that the content aligns with the viewer’s understanding of what is interesting, helpful, or informative enough to pass on. YouTube’s algorithm now treats shares as one of the most reliable proxies for satisfaction and trust, especially in conjunction with completion rates.
Videos that are useful across contexts, such as instructional guides, problem-solving explainers, or timely thought pieces, are more likely to perform well under this logic. Video production agencies must now approach pre-production and scripting with an eye toward how the content may be discussed, referenced, or distributed by viewers beyond the platform itself.
Structural Implications for Production Planning
Intentional Engagement Design
Producing a video that performs under this new system requires planning beyond traditional storytelling structures. It must incorporate deliberate moments designed to hold attention, invite interpretation, or prompt further distribution. This includes:
- Building in narrative progression that rewards full viewing.
- Integrating data or concepts that encourage follow-up discussion or application.
- Pacing content in a way that supports long-duration engagement without resorting to artificial tension or over-editing.
For video production agencies managing the full lifecycle of branded content, this may affect how scripts are developed, how post-production is approached, and how success is defined.
Content Format Integration Across Platforms
Shorts and long-form videos are no longer separate in their purpose. The updated algorithm treats Shorts as both stand-alone pieces and feeder content into longer viewing journeys. Engaged Shorts can trigger visibility of a brand’s broader video portfolio.
In this environment, agencies must consider how to link short and long-form productions in narrative, tone, and topic. Doing so provides not only a strategy for higher performance, but also reinforces brand consistency across entry points.
Renewed Importance of Metadata and Archival Content
YouTube’s integration of large-language models allows its algorithm to understand the content of videos in more depth than before. Metadata, subtitles, and even spoken dialogue are analysed for topical relevance.
Older videos with useful or relevant information may begin to surface again if their metadata is updated to align with emerging trends. Video production agencies managing back catalogues of client content should now treat metadata as an active part of strategic planning.
Strategic Questions to Guide Future Video Briefs
- Are opening segments designed to retain viewers for at least 60 seconds across devices?
- Is the content structured to contain ideas or material that viewers would share with others in similar roles or industries?
- Have Shorts been used as entry-points to longer content that offers deeper value or information?
- Does the content reflect current viewer interests based on timing, industry relevance, or recent changes in technology or policy?
These questions are not simply checklist items. They represent a shift in how branded content must be considered from the earliest stages of production to meet the standards now prioritised by YouTube’s evolving systems.
Video Production Agencies Must Adjust to New Discovery Logic
The relationship between watch time and shares is no longer a side note in YouTube strategy, it is now central to visibility and performance. The platform’s recent changes confirm a broader pattern: content must not only be retained by viewers, but it must also move through them.
For businesses investing in video content, this means evaluating how professional production services can support the creation of video that does more than display information. It must meet technical thresholds of retention while also offering information or relevance that leads to further distribution.
Video production agencies now carry a wider responsibility in helping clients think through how videos are planned, produced, and positioned. It is no longer enough to optimise for visibility within YouTube itself. The real measure of effectiveness lies in how content travels, within the platform and beyond it.
As YouTube continues refining its systems through AI and user-specific models, strategies rooted in surface-level metrics will fall short. The next phase of successful video performance depends on how well content is designed to participate in user-led journeys of discovery, both personal and collective.
If your organisation is revisiting how its content performs across platforms, Sound Idea Digital works with clients to align video production with updated platform logic and audience behaviours. For support with planning, producing or evaluating content in light of these changes, speak to our team.
We are a full-service Web Development and Content Production Agency in Gauteng specialising in Video Production, Animation, eLearning Content Development, Learning Management Systems, and Content Production.
Contact us for a quote. | enquiries@soundidea.co.za | https://www.soundideavideoproduction.co.za| +27 82 491 5824 |
Strategic Intersections Beyond YouTube
Platform decisions, from YouTube to LinkedIn, are influencing how video content is seen, shared, and valued. As organisations reassess what earns visibility and trust online, it is worth considering how algorithm changes, content framing, and automation intersect with long-term strategic goals. The articles below explore related developments, including the balance between attention and credibility, and whether AI is likely to alter the role of production professionals.
How a Video Production Firm Can Help You Get Views