At the Made on YouTube event, the world’s largest video platform unveiled the Hype program, designed to support little-known creators. This initiative helps viewers rally around emerging talent, enabling them to expand their audience and gain recognition.
How the Hype Program Works
YouTube is known for its diverse creators, who cover an extensive range of topics. However, attracting new viewers can be challenging, especially for those with smaller audiences. The Hype program addresses this by allowing viewers to “hype” videos that are less than 7 days old from creators with fewer than 500,000 subscribers. The more Hype points a video receives, the higher it rises on a new leaderboard that features the top 100 hyped videos of the week. Each viewer can hype up to three videos per week, providing more impactful promotion than likes and reposts. Notably, this activity does not influence YouTube’s recommendation or search algorithms.
When a viewer hypes a video, it earns points that help the creator climb the weekly leaderboard in their country, thus reaching a broader audience. There’s also a “bonus for small creators,” offering a higher point coefficient for channels with fewer subscribers. This mechanism not only indicates which content viewers enjoy but also promotes the most hyped videos, marked with a popularity badge.
Program Results and Future Expansion
The Hype program was tested in Brazil, Turkey, and Taiwan, where viewers hyped videos over 5 million times within the first four weeks, promoting around 50,000 channels. The largest age group involved was viewers aged 18 to 24, representing 30% of participants.
Inspired by a survey conducted among 2,500 viewers in the US, Germany, and Japan, YouTube found that more than 75% of respondents—and over 80% of Generation Z viewers—wanted to support little-known creators. Initially, a 24-hour threshold for video promotion was tested but was extended to 7 days for better results, adds NIX Solutions.
YouTube plans to expand the Hype program beyond the pilot regions and continue to refine it based on user feedback. We’ll keep you updated as this initiative grows and develops.