Does Independent Animation Have a Future on YouTube?

Sorry for the seriousness of this video, but I had to get this off my chest. By chest I mean the ipad with the script to the left of the camera.

Playlist:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iAYf9YJSKXc&list=PLAqrFO4pA8fuWmZ1F39iEqTfeHPGtkSa8&index=1&src_vid=Gi6FcI2wFrw&feature=iv&annotation_id=annotation_1771936745

Cartoon Brew covered this!:
http://www.cartoonbrew.com/ideas-commentary/is-youtube-making-it-harder-for-animators-to-make-money-102408.html

Newgrounds once again as an alternative to Animators?:
http://www.newgrounds.com/bbs/topic/1372021

Information from the YouTube Certification Program - Which can be found here ( https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/2952738?hl=en ):

- Watch time is greatest for 7 day active YouTube users.
- Watch time increases as a user's subscription count increases. The more subscriptions a user has, the more often they come back to YouTube and the longer they tend to watch.
-YouTube’s goal is to increase the amount of content that is seen by making the platform a daily viewing destination.
-Watch more and watch longer.
-Most people think that the value of a video can be measured by how many times that video has been seen. However, we now reward videos that have more watch time. This is a better reflection of the value of the content rather than how many times it was seen. All major search and discovery algorithms are optimized for watch time throughout the site. Not all views are the same.
-Value is not dependent on the individual video. It also depends on the viewing session from that video.
-YouTube rewards a 6 minute video with 55% retention (3.3 minutes total for that video) with 20min/viewer total OVER a 3 minute video with 100% retention (3 minute total) where the viewers had an overall average watch time of 10 minutes rather than 20. Basically, depends on the viewer's behavior surrounding your video. (Explains why watch time can be helpful for YouTube- more watch time across the site means more ad impressions)
-So directing people to watch more videos is really helpful.
-Increasing video's length just to get more watch time does not work, because it affects audience retention and doesn't increase watch time. Also, don't decrease watch time to increase audience retention.
-Focus on watch time, not views.
-Suggested videos are ranked by watch time. http://gyazo.com/a2c277486f054f92b7e149c8a818f1c8
-Search results are also ranked by watch time.

Видео Does Independent Animation Have a Future on YouTube? канала RubberNinja