Next Year, YouTube Will Allow Testing Different Versions of the Same Video ⇥ youtube.com

Aparna Pappu of YouTube:

This builds on the incredible success we’ve seen with other Studio tools like A/B testing, where creators have run more than 40 million experiments to find the perfect titles and thumbnails for their videos since the feature officially launched in 2024. Coming soon, you’ll also be able to test up to three video cuts to see which hook performs best with the new video A/B testing feature.

This is a very short introduction to a potentially very transformative feature: different people will now be watching different versions of what is ostensibly the same video.

Marques Brownlee has a thoughtful video about the potential consequences and I think it is worth your time. Brownlee got to speak with some YouTube engineers about his concerns — including really basic questions like whether someone will know they are watching a video that has other versions — and they apparently had few answers. One thing they did address, though, is that this feature is apparently intended to allow slightly different variations and not wholly different videos. Some mysterious-to-everyone A.I. analysis will determine whether the variations are similar enough to permit A/B testing.

YouTube announced this feature about two weeks ago, and according to Brownlee, it will be launching next year. I am not exactly plugged into the YouTube world but this is the first I am hearing of it and, while I would like to believe YouTube will adequately communicate this closer to launch, I think most video viewers are going to find this unpleasant and surprising. If it rolls out as described now, I bet you will see a lot of confused comments under videos with people referencing something that only happened in one version.