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Building the sponsor talk

Experiment #106 · closed · published 4/18/2026, 9:24:00 AM

What happened

Creative features

  • hookTypedemo_first
  • lengthBucketunder_60s
  • thumbnailArchetypeface_reaction
  • publishSlotweekend_am
  • formatinterview
  • topicCluster3

Confounds the baseline knew

  • Followers at publish19,301
  • Days since previous post1.7
  • Channel age at publish (days)148
  • Local publish time4/18/2026, 9:24:00 AM

The residual reward

Raw views mostly measure how big the channel already was. The baseline predicts what this channel “should” have earned given the confounds above; the residual is how the post actually landed relative to that prediction — measured in standard deviations.

Observed (168h)

244

Baseline expected

131

Residual reward

+1.03σ

raw 1.03σ · residual sd 0.599 log-views

Checkpoints

CheckpointViewsWatch time (min)CommentsLikesFollower delta
168h (close)2443,4161120
24h1341,879170
72h1952,7331100

What changed in the posterior

  • Post beat its baseline by 1.03σ. Moved: topic_cluster:topic_3 +0.013, publish_slot:weekend_am +0.012, length_bucket:under_60s +0.009.

    • topic_30.3680.381 Δ+0.013±0.30
    • weekend_am0.0900.102 Δ+0.012±0.31
    • under_60s0.1970.206 Δ+0.009±0.29
    • interview0.1420.150 Δ+0.009±0.28
    • demo_first-0.098-0.091 Δ+0.007±0.27
    • face_reaction0.1150.120 Δ+0.004±0.27
    • topic_40.2350.231 Δ-0.004±0.28
    • topic_1-0.025-0.029 Δ-0.004±0.28
    • object_hero-0.392-0.396 Δ-0.004±0.28
    • weekday_am-0.110-0.113 Δ-0.004±0.28
    • 4_10m-0.283-0.287 Δ-0.004±0.29
    • weekday_pm-0.102-0.106 Δ-0.004±0.26
    • question0.1290.126 Δ-0.002±0.28
    • 10_20m-0.035-0.037 Δ-0.002±0.27
    • before_after0.1050.107 Δ+0.002±0.31
    • claim-0.067-0.069 Δ-0.002±0.29
    • shorts0.1270.125 Δ-0.002±0.29
    • commentary-0.134-0.136 Δ-0.002±0.29
    • topic_0-0.099-0.101 Δ-0.002±0.28
    • contrarian-0.005-0.006 Δ-0.001±0.29
    • list-0.039-0.040 Δ-0.001±0.31
    • number_list-0.271-0.269 Δ+0.001±0.28
    • weekday_late-0.267-0.268 Δ-0.001±0.29
    • 1_4m0.0030.003 Δ+0.001±0.27
    • none0.0400.041 Δ+0.001±0.29
    • weekend_pm0.3550.354 Δ-0.001±0.29
    • topic_6-0.502-0.503 Δ-0.001±0.33
    • 20m_plus0.0850.084 Δ-0.001±0.29
    • topic_2-0.154-0.153 Δ+0.000±0.28
    • tutorial0.0320.032 Δ-0.000±0.27
    • vlog-0.161-0.162 Δ-0.000±0.28
    • topic_70.2040.204 Δ-0.000±0.33
    • story_cold_open0.2790.279 Δ+0.000±0.29
    • topic_5-0.061-0.061 Δ+0.000±0.32
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