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I nearly quit the sponsor talk

Experiment #117 · closed · published 5/3/2026, 5:17:00 PM

What happened

Creative features

  • hookTypestory_cold_open
  • lengthBucket1_4m
  • thumbnailArchetypetext_dominant
  • publishSlotweekend_pm
  • formatinterview
  • topicCluster3

Confounds the baseline knew

  • Followers at publish20,276
  • Days since previous post2.4
  • Channel age at publish (days)163
  • Local publish time5/3/2026, 5:17:00 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)

170

Baseline expected

140

Residual reward

+0.33σ

raw 0.33σ · residual sd 0.599 log-views

Checkpoints

CheckpointViewsWatch time (min)CommentsLikesFollower delta
168h (close)1708,925190
24h944,909050
72h1367,140170

What changed in the posterior

  • Post beat its baseline by 0.33σ. Moved: topic_cluster:topic_3 -0.049, format:interview -0.035, hook_type:story_cold_open -0.034.

    • topic_30.3570.308 Δ-0.049±0.28
    • interview0.1440.109 Δ-0.035±0.27
    • story_cold_open0.2030.169 Δ-0.034±0.27
    • weekend_pm0.4170.388 Δ-0.029±0.29
    • 1_4m0.005-0.023 Δ-0.028±0.26
    • topic_1-0.058-0.039 Δ+0.019±0.27
    • text_dominant0.1160.097 Δ-0.019±0.26
    • topic_6-0.532-0.516 Δ+0.016±0.33
    • vlog-0.171-0.157 Δ+0.014±0.27
    • 10_20m0.0130.024 Δ+0.011±0.26
    • shorts0.1530.164 Δ+0.011±0.28
    • weekday_am-0.127-0.116 Δ+0.011±0.27
    • weekend_am0.1040.115 Δ+0.010±0.30
    • tutorial-0.025-0.015 Δ+0.010±0.26
    • number_list-0.162-0.152 Δ+0.010±0.27
    • 4_10m-0.242-0.234 Δ+0.009±0.28
    • topic_0-0.083-0.075 Δ+0.008±0.27
    • face_reaction0.0480.056 Δ+0.008±0.26
    • question0.1010.108 Δ+0.007±0.28
    • under_60s0.1190.124 Δ+0.005±0.28
    • commentary-0.167-0.172 Δ-0.005±0.28
    • demo_first-0.029-0.025 Δ+0.005±0.27
    • contrarian-0.037-0.032 Δ+0.005±0.28
    • topic_40.1670.162 Δ-0.005±0.27
    • claim-0.060-0.056 Δ+0.004±0.29
    • object_hero-0.315-0.310 Δ+0.004±0.28
    • topic_2-0.176-0.172 Δ+0.004±0.28
    • weekday_late-0.304-0.300 Δ+0.003±0.29
    • topic_50.1040.108 Δ+0.003±0.30
    • list0.0820.084 Δ+0.002±0.30
    • none0.1030.105 Δ+0.002±0.28
    • before_after0.0640.065 Δ+0.001±0.30
    • weekday_pm-0.075-0.074 Δ+0.001±0.25
    • 20m_plus0.1210.122 Δ+0.001±0.29
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