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Nobody saw the sponsor talk

Experiment #114 · closed · published 4/29/2026, 5:43:00 PM

What happened

Creative features

  • hookTypestory_cold_open
  • lengthBucketunder_60s
  • thumbnailArchetypeface_reaction
  • publishSlotweekday_pm
  • formattutorial
  • topicCluster3

Confounds the baseline knew

  • Followers at publish20,018
  • Days since previous post1.1
  • Channel age at publish (days)159
  • Local publish time4/29/2026, 5:43:00 PM

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)

91

Baseline expected

132

Residual reward

-0.62σ

raw -0.62σ · residual sd 0.599 log-views

Checkpoints

CheckpointViewsWatch time (min)CommentsLikesFollower delta
168h (close)911,274050
24h50701030
72h731,019040

What changed in the posterior

  • Post missed its baseline by 0.62σ. Moved: topic_cluster:topic_3 -0.087, hook_type:story_cold_open -0.061, length_bucket:under_60s -0.044.

    • topic_30.4410.353 Δ-0.087±0.29
    • story_cold_open0.2600.198 Δ-0.061±0.28
    • under_60s0.1880.144 Δ-0.044±0.28
    • tutorial0.006-0.033 Δ-0.040±0.27
    • topic_0-0.125-0.086 Δ+0.039±0.27
    • weekday_pm-0.043-0.079 Δ-0.037±0.25
    • face_reaction0.0970.066 Δ-0.030±0.26
    • shorts0.1240.154 Δ+0.029±0.28
    • topic_6-0.565-0.537 Δ+0.028±0.33
    • 4_10m-0.277-0.253 Δ+0.024±0.28
    • demo_first-0.057-0.035 Δ+0.023±0.27
    • claim-0.081-0.062 Δ+0.019±0.29
    • contrarian-0.065-0.049 Δ+0.016±0.29
    • weekday_am-0.125-0.110 Δ+0.015±0.28
    • object_hero-0.332-0.318 Δ+0.014±0.28
    • before_after0.0510.064 Δ+0.014±0.30
    • topic_70.2530.240 Δ-0.013±0.32
    • weekend_pm0.4080.419 Δ+0.011±0.29
    • topic_1-0.068-0.057 Δ+0.011±0.27
    • topic_2-0.185-0.177 Δ+0.009±0.28
    • weekend_am0.0900.097 Δ+0.008±0.30
    • 20m_plus0.1140.122 Δ+0.007±0.29
    • vlog-0.155-0.149 Δ+0.007±0.28
    • topic_50.0990.106 Δ+0.007±0.30
    • list0.0780.085 Δ+0.006±0.30
    • 1_4m-0.007-0.001 Δ+0.006±0.27
    • text_dominant0.1070.112 Δ+0.006±0.26
    • none0.1010.095 Δ-0.006±0.28
    • 10_20m0.0040.009 Δ+0.005±0.26
    • question0.1240.128 Δ+0.005±0.28
    • topic_40.1740.178 Δ+0.005±0.28
    • number_list-0.157-0.160 Δ-0.003±0.27
    • interview0.1330.130 Δ-0.003±0.27
    • commentary-0.164-0.166 Δ-0.002±0.28
    • weekday_late-0.308-0.307 Δ+0.001±0.29
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