Are YouTube Promotion Subscribers Real?
Reddit threads about YouTube promotion often turn to one worry: are the new subscribers real? The signs people point to, like more subscribers than views or subscribers you can't see, have plain causes.
The short answer
Subscribers from a YouTube ad run through Google Ads are real people who chose to subscribe. YouTube keeps subscriptions private by default, so you won't see most of their names, and you can check where the views came from in YouTube Studio.
Why you can't see most new subscribers
YouTube keeps a person's subscriptions private by default, and private subscribers don't show in your recent subscribers list. So a promotion can add hundreds of subscribers while only a few names appear.
Views increased from 500 to 3K. Likes 20 to 120. Subs 260 to 520, though only a few were visible out of hundreds as a public sub in notifications. …
Why subscribers can outnumber views
Google counts the two by different rules. In the YouTube feed and search results, a paid view is usually a click on your video, and people who choose to click subscribe far more often. The ad's Subscribe button opens your channel page to confirm, so YouTube shows those subscribers as coming from your channel page. Why the numbers differ.
How Reddit users checked theirs
In YouTube Studio, open the video's Analytics, then the traffic sources. Views from the ad show as YouTube advertising, and comments and likes on your other videos show who stayed. Step by step.
…I researched for about a month before pulling the trigger so I was very confident the company I chose wasn't going to flood me with bot views. … So I am fairly confident actual humans were watching the video. …
I have been running discovery ads for one of my videos. Got a decent # of subscribers and a lot of new interaction on my other videos that I never had before. A decent amount of the subscribers are sticking around for new content. …
What makes new subscribers stay
Show the ad to people who already watch videos like yours, and promote a video that shows what your channel is about. Then keep uploading, so the people who subscribed have a reason to come back.
…For example if I wanted to create a detailed tutorial on learning Shopify and I wanted my ad to appear at the top of search results when someone searches for learn Shopify then I don't see any reason the subscribers gained from running that ad are going to be bad. …
More from Reddit
Subscriber questions from Reddit
Are subscribers from YouTube ads bots?
No. Google Ads shows your video to signed-in YouTube users, and YouTube's help page says all views and subscribers you gain through a Promote campaign are legitimate.
Do subscribers from ads count toward 1,000 for monetization?
They count in your subscriber count and get your new uploads. For the Partner Program application, YouTube counts organic subscribers. How monetization counts work.
Why are my new subscribers private?
YouTube keeps subscriptions private by default. Your count includes everyone, but only people with public subscriptions show by name.
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