Transcription
YouTube just dropped their biggest report of the year. And if you're running faceless YouTube channels or thinking about running a faceless channel, or you're really running any channel on YouTube at all, this might be the most important video you watch all this year.
Because here's what most people don't realize. YouTube is about to go through some massive changes in 2026. And the creators who adapt to these changes early are going to be the ones that absolutely dominate. Meanwhile, everybody else is going to be left behind wondering what happened.
You might be saying, "Matt, what are you even talking about? What are these changes?" Well, YouTube just released their culture and trends report. And buried in this report are some game-changing insights that most creators are completely ignoring. But here's the thing. These changes are actually perfect for faceless YouTube channels if you know how to leverage them correctly.
Now, I personally run 12 different faceless YouTube channels. I've helped over 11,000 people grow their own channels, and I've made over $10 million from my channels. Now, I'm not saying any of this to brag, just to show you that I know what I'm talking about when it comes to doing YouTube. So, when I see changes like this that are coming, I pay attention. And I've been paying attention to all of the changes over the past 10 years during my time on YouTube. And more importantly, I think I figured out how to use these changes to our advantage, which can present massive opportunities to you and me. And that's exactly what I'm going to show you today. I'm going to break down the five biggest changes that are coming to YouTube and, more importantly, how to position yourself and your faceless channels or any type of channel to take advantage of every single one of them.
But first of all, let me tell you why this matters so much right now. YouTube isn't just some video platform anymore. Over a billion hours are spent on YouTube every single day, which is more than Netflix, more than TV, more than everything else combined. And the craziest part is that they paid $70 billion to creators just in the past couple years. So, we're not just talking about some little side hustle opportunity here. We're talking about the biggest media platform in human history, and it's growing faster than ever.
That's the thing. Like, people used to look at YouTube back when I was doing it as a high school student and I was making a couple thousand dollars a month. They looked at YouTube as a joke. And people thought, you know, YouTube is going to come and go. But now I'm sitting here in 2025, 10 years later, and I'm making over half a million dollars a month from YouTube. Again, I'm not saying any of this to brag whatsoever, but I just want to show you that YouTube has grown exponentially. And the people who have ridden that wave of doing YouTube during that time have benefited enormously, like myself. And I'm incredibly grateful to be in the position that I am today. But in my opinion, over the next 10 years, it's going to grow even exponentially more.
But the thing is, the rules of the game are changing. And what worked in 2020 is not going to be working now in 2025 and going into 2026. And if you don't adapt, you're going to be crushed by algorithm changes, the competition, and potentially even getting your channel banned, which I don't want to happen to you, which is why I'm making this video right now. Now, that being said, the good news is that if you do understand these changes and position your channel correctly, then 2026 could be your biggest year ever on YouTube.
So, let me break down the five biggest changes that are coming and exactly how to use them for your faceless channels or really any type of channel.
So, after going through the YouTube report, the first change that I saw was that subscribers don't really matter anymore. And the key now and going forward to going viral and making sure your content reaches as big of an audience as possible is picking the right interest. This is probably the biggest shift happening on YouTube right now. And most creators have no idea that it's even going on.
Here's a quote directly from YouTube's report. They say that audiences initially are drawn to creators through shared special interests and stay for the innovative ways that those creators explore and expand those fixations. Now, you might be saying, Matt, what in the world does that mean? In simple terms, subscribers do not matter like they used to. You can literally start a brand new faceless channel today. And if you understand viewer interest, you can go viral and get discovered in a matter of days. No existing audience required.
Why is this happening? It's because YouTube's algorithm has completely shifted. Instead of recommending videos based on people that you're subscribed to, it's now recommending based on what people are interested in more. So, let me give you an example of this. Say, for example, that you are interested in politics or stock market news, and you create a video about some of the biggest things that are happening in those spaces. YouTube's algorithm will automatically push that content to audiences that are interested in those niches.
This is huge for faceless channels or any channel on YouTube because it levels the playing field completely. Think about your own YouTube behavior. You don't go to YouTube wanting to find some specific person or some specific channel to follow. You go because you want to learn something, you're interested in a topic, or you just want to be entertained on a specific topic. Let's say you want to learn about making money online, for example. Maybe you're interested in health and fitness. Maybe you want to know about the latest AI tools. You're searching based off of interest and not personality.
And this is where faceless channels, in particular, like I've been shown how to do over the past few years, have a massive advantage because you're not selling your personality. You're solving problems and tapping into interest. But it's not as simple as it sounds. There's a few things that you need to know before YouTube actually starts to push your content.
Here's how to leverage this change for your faceless channels. Number one is to pick an interest-based niche. Don't pick a niche based on what you think is going to get views. Pick a niche that contains a genuine problem that people want to solve. Over the years, I've seen these five niches that you're seeing on the screen right now consistently rise to the top because they're evergreen topics. Feel free to pause and take a look at these niches. And there's tons of different sub-niches under these as well, which I would recommend going into. So instead of just doing health and fitness, for example, do something like longevity, or health and fitness for older people, or health and fitness for younger people.
Number two then is to use titles that have already worked, but not specifically in your niche. So don't try to reinvent the wheel and come up with some new topic that's never been done before. Instead, recreate videos that have done really well in your niche, but also recreate videos that have done well outside your niche. Now, you might be saying, Matt, how does that even make sense? If I'm going to be recreating videos outside my niche, wouldn't that by definition be making videos outside my niche? Not at all. What you want to do is take the concept that's worked in those other niches and then apply that to your niche. For example, I saw this video go pretty viral, and it was about, uh, mega-dosing creatine after like 50 years old. And videos like this have gone viral in other sub-niches of health, like mega-dosing different supplements and stuff like that. But nobody's done it in regards to creatine as an older person. And this guy did it, and he had a pretty small channel. He was barely getting any views on any of his videos. But then he did that, and his channel absolutely took off. He got millions of views on his past couple videos because he found a topic that worked in another sub-niche, but then he applied it to his sub-niche. And then make sure to use those keywords from your title actually verbally in your video as well. So you speak them throughout the video.
And there's some pros and cons of this new YouTube change. You know, you might be thinking, Matt, if I already have a bunch of subscribers, like I personally do on a lot of my channels, couldn't this be seen as a bad thing due to the fact that I'm not going to be getting my videos surfaced as much to my own subscribers? And yes, you could look at it that way. However, how I view this is that it levels the playing field so that you're competing against all the other videos on YouTube. And every video is its own specific seed that you're basically planting. And if it's good enough, it will come to harvest and it will do really good on YouTube. But the key is that the video has to be good enough. And the way you do that is by providing as much value as possible, which keeps people on the platform. You can also implement my session time hack as well by sending people to a really long video after they watch one of your videos. And I'll give you an example of that at the end of this video as well, where you send people to another one of your own super long videos via end screen. And then that'll keep people on YouTube for a long period of time, increasing your session time and therefore getting you a bunch of views because YouTube wants to push out content that keeps people on the platform. And if you do want to sell something from your channel, you do it from that long video, but not from all the other videos on your channel.
Now, the second change that's happening involves long and short. Let me explain. Another quote from the report is that the videos that we watch and that people are watching on YouTube are getting both longer and shorter. So, how does that work? Well, YouTube discovered that it's in the extremes that people are absolutely crushing it right now. The first is micro content, also commonly known as YouTube Shorts. And the second is deep content, which are videos longer than 20, 30 minutes, sometimes even hour-long videos. This is the kind of content that gets you a very high retention. So even if you get less views on it, you're keeping those views on YouTube for a long period of time. Kind of like what I'm talking about. And usually, I go for this longer type of content because you don't have to get as many views and you can make way more money from it, from my experience. But what YouTube is telling us in the report is that both of these types of content can work incredibly well for getting millions of views.
So the ideal strategy, in an ideal world, would be to use both of these types of content in something that I would call the perfect balance strategy. Because the thing is, if you're going to do YouTube Shorts, doing YouTube Shorts alone is not enough. The real money is in long-form content. But if you're going to do Shorts and you want to benefit from the billions of views that are spent on YouTube Shorts, then you need to create Shorts that give a little bit of value and then link those Shorts to your long-form video by way of adding a related video as you upload the Short. You can do that. You can link it to another video and then post as many Shorts as you possibly can, all linking to a long video to benefit from them as much as possible. That way, you're using both formats to your advantage. And also, you can even take clips out of your longer-form videos and then make those into Shorts as well.
But personally, I like to focus on the longer-form videos. There's a lot more money in them, and honestly, I don't really do much with Shorts as of right now. Anyways, if you wanted to just go super viral and get millions of views and have cool analytics to show and get play buttons to show that you got a million subscribers and so forth, then Shorts are definitely the easiest way of doing that. However, if you want to make a lot of money from your channel and build your channel into a huge business and everything, then longer-form is better. So, it depends on your priorities here. My priorities are building a huge business off of YouTube and also trying to give a lot of value as well. So, I'm focusing as much as possible on the longer-form aspect of content.
And that brings me to the third change that's happening on YouTube right now. And this is a huge one. See, most people don't realize that a lot of people are watching YouTube now on their TVs. In fact, more than ever before. YouTube has actually dominated TV watch time over the past couple years. And not many people realize this. And it means that people are treating YouTube like Netflix now. They're sitting on their couch. They're playing a video. They're letting it play for 30, 60 minutes. And in some cases, they're playing a video overnight in their bedroom on their TV doing like sleep sounds, or for example, sleep philosophy videos so they can get smarter as they sleep. These are actually huge niches. There's also sleeping history videos, which are absolutely taking off right now. And this is massive for faceless channels because you don't need charisma. You don't need a personality to create this type of content. You just need content that people can consume passively.
Let me give you a couple examples. So this channel, Uncharted Mysteries, does these super long videos, like 3 to 4 hour long videos, and what it is is like interesting historical stories, dark stories, and stuff like that. And similarly, this channel called Dreams of Disclosure has some stories like that also that you can fall asleep to. There's also channels like all those sleeping history and sleeping philosophy videos, and also channels like Top Travel, which makes multiple hour-long travel guide videos about different destinations, and they get tons of views. And do you know what the CPMs on this type of content is like? Which is how much you make per thousand views? Typically, it's very high because you can put a lot of ad breaks in that long of content. But even putting the ads aside, this type of content will gather so much watch time.
Now, how do you actually conceptualize doing this type of content? Well, what you want to do is to create content that's understandable even if someone isn't actively watching the screen. This means clear voiceovers, good quality audio, and content that doesn't necessarily heavily rely on visual elements. In fact, a lot of these like sleeping history, sleeping philosophy channels, a lot of times it's literally just like AI-generated visuals in the background of the video while there's just talking about different historical or philosophy facts with an AI voiceover. Now, if you're going to use an AI voiceover, don't do the ones that everybody else uses on stuff like 11 Labs. Try to find something unique, or even better yet, clone your own voice to use. Like, I've cloned my own voice. It's on 11 Labs. Anybody can use it. If you want to use it to make a faceless channel, be my guest because it's not as heavily used as those default voices that everybody else is using. And lastly, do not artificially cut your videos short. If you can provide value for 45 minutes, do it. Like, for example, if you're making a comprehensive guide about all of the best places in a specific country, don't just limit it to just a couple cities. Go over a bunch of different cities and a bunch of different tourist attractions to make your video as long as you possibly can. YouTube loves longer watch times. They'll give you all the views and subscribers that you want if you can keep people on the platform. And TV viewing is a huge change that YouTube mentioned in the report that you should definitely focus on.
Now, the fourth change is the intimacy effect, which is authenticity in automation. Now, you might be saying, Matt, how can you provide any type of authenticity in faceless content? By definition, faceless content is literally content that doesn't even have you in it. And this is where most people get faceless channels completely wrong. Authenticity doesn't mean showing your face. It means being real, vulnerable, and providing genuine value. But the thing is, you can do all of these things without you even being involved at all.
So, what I've been talking about a lot lately on this channel is making something like an AI avatar. It can be of yourself. It could be of just an avatar that you invent and create, and then having that avatar basically represent the channel and be the face of it. Like, there's this one channel, I think it's called Yellow Man or Yellow Guy. Look it up on YouTube. And basically, they do these fitness tutorials, and that avatar is the face of the channel. And personally, I think it's an incredibly good idea to create an avatar like this for any type of faceless channel you run because then you're building real brand IP with your channel. So if anything happens to your channel or anything else in the future, you've still got that IP that you built up, and you've built a real brand on YouTube. This is really important and something I think a lot more people should focus on.
Now, the fifth change is the creator to founder pipeline. This is perhaps the most important change, especially if you want to make money on YouTube. Because after analyzing YouTube's new report, something is very clear. Successful creators don't just make content, they create companies. Because if you think about it, making content or paying people to make it for you and so forth, and expanding on a bigger and bigger scale requires resources. It requires money. And the only way you're going to get that money is by monetizing your channel correctly. You're not You shouldn't just be in this to get views. Views, in my opinion, are vanity metrics. And if you want to give views, just upload Shorts like we talked about earlier. But if you want to build a real business on YouTube, then I recommend doing a couple things.
Number one, focus on educational content rather than entertainment. If you make how-to type videos, then you are targeting people with a direct problem that they want solved. And then what you can do is send those people to an ultra-long video that's kind of like a complete guide. So you're doing what we talked about earlier, keeping people on YouTube for a long period of time. But not only that, then at the end of that complete guide, you sell them a solution. Now, the best solution is either a software where you can make monthly recurring income from it, or an online course. Now, you might be saying, "Matt, I'm not an expert. I don't know how I'm going to even offer that." The thing is, you don't have to sell it yourself. Instead, be an affiliate for something that already exists. Just go to ChatGPT and ask it, "What are the best affiliate programs for a digital product, either a course or a software that I could promote for my channel?" and then take those, become an affiliate for them, and then promote that from your channel in the way we're talking about. But don't just promote it on every single video. Instead, send people to a long video, keep people on the platform, and then sell it.
Let me show you the math just to prove this. Let's say you implement these strategies. You get 100,000 views a month across all of your content by the end of 2025 going into 2026. With traditional YouTube automation in traditional YouTube and doing YouTube the traditional way at a $10 CPM, which is pretty good, that's making $10 per thousand views. Then you're only making $1,000 a month. You might be saying, "Matt, that's not bad for only 100K views." Which I agree. However, it's not life-changing. It's not what I would recommend shooting for. But with the strategies I'm showing you, that same 100,000 views could potentially generate $20K per month or more. Now, it's really important to understand that these kind of results are definitely not guaranteed. This is an important disclaimer I need to give every single time because some people think they can just upload videos to YouTube and they automatically make $20K a month. That's not the way it works. But what I'm saying is that I've seen from my own experience with running channels, I've made $27K a month off a channel that only got 166K views in that month. And it's because I sold a digital product from my channel in the way that we're talking about. And that channel is completely faceless, by the way.
And now, look, I know this might seem overwhelming. There's tons of changes happening on YouTube right now, and it can feel like the rules are just constantly shifting. But here's the truth. These changes are actually the biggest opportunity that we've seen on YouTube in years. The playing field is leveled, and smart creators who understand these trends are going to be the ones that absolutely dominate. The question is, are you going to be one of them?
So, you have two choices at this point. You either keep doing things the same way you have been, hoping for ad revenue, competing with millions of people, just making entertainment content, or you can adapt to these changes and position yourself for 2026 and build a real business.
Now, if you want to take the second path, I do have a program called Tube Accelerator where I'll show you exactly how to do this step by step, exactly how I'm running faceless channels in a new updated way for 2025. You can schedule a call with my team down at the link below. And also, if you want to learn more about it and you're unsure about whether you want to join a program right now or anything else, totally understandable. Then you can check out this video next to me right here, which will show you exactly how to run faceless YouTube channels in a complete guide. And as I promised, I'm doing exactly what I was telling you about earlier, which is linking to a very long video on your channel and then keeping people on the platform. So, I practice what I preach. Check that video out right there. My name is Matt Par. Thanks for watching everybody, and I will see you.