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I nearly quit the sponsor talk

Experiment #173 · closed · published 7/20/2026, 4:38:00 PM

What happened

Creative features

  • hookTypestory_cold_open
  • lengthBucketunder_60s
  • thumbnailArchetypeface_reaction
  • publishSlotweekday_pm
  • formatcommentary
  • topicCluster1

Confounds the baseline knew

  • Followers at publish26,051
  • Days since previous post1.1
  • Channel age at publish (days)241
  • Local publish time7/20/2026, 4:38:00 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)

286

Baseline expected

188

Residual reward

+0.70σ

raw 0.70σ · residual sd 0.599 log-views

Checkpoints

CheckpointViewsWatch time (min)CommentsLikesFollower delta
168h (close)2864,0041141
24h1572,202180
72h2293,2031110

What changed in the posterior

  • Post beat its baseline by 0.70σ. Moved: topic_cluster:topic_1 +0.015, format:commentary +0.015, hook_type:story_cold_open +0.013.

    • topic_1-0.080-0.065 Δ+0.015±0.25
    • commentary-0.031-0.016 Δ+0.015±0.26
    • story_cold_open0.1870.200 Δ+0.013±0.25
    • under_60s0.1100.121 Δ+0.011±0.25
    • face_reaction0.0430.051 Δ+0.008±0.24
    • topic_0-0.014-0.021 Δ-0.007±0.25
    • weekday_pm-0.066-0.060 Δ+0.006±0.24
    • topic_2-0.181-0.187 Δ-0.005±0.26
    • claim-0.168-0.172 Δ-0.004±0.25
    • tutorial0.0290.025 Δ-0.004±0.24
    • demo_first-0.048-0.052 Δ-0.004±0.25
    • interview0.1490.146 Δ-0.004±0.24
    • 20m_plus-0.115-0.118 Δ-0.003±0.26
    • object_hero-0.279-0.282 Δ-0.003±0.26
    • list-0.020-0.022 Δ-0.003±0.27
    • weekend_pm0.1520.150 Δ-0.003±0.26
    • 1_4m0.0540.052 Δ-0.002±0.25
    • before_after0.0880.086 Δ-0.002±0.27
    • 10_20m0.0490.047 Δ-0.002±0.25
    • shorts-0.076-0.078 Δ-0.002±0.26
    • contrarian-0.002-0.004 Δ-0.002±0.25
    • text_dominant0.0560.054 Δ-0.002±0.25
    • weekday_am-0.104-0.106 Δ-0.002±0.25
    • weekend_am0.1440.142 Δ-0.002±0.28
    • topic_30.2460.244 Δ-0.002±0.25
    • question0.1560.155 Δ-0.002±0.26
    • weekday_late-0.129-0.127 Δ+0.002±0.27
    • 4_10m-0.102-0.103 Δ-0.001±0.25
    • topic_5-0.011-0.010 Δ+0.001±0.26
    • topic_6-0.299-0.298 Δ+0.001±0.27
    • topic_70.1720.171 Δ-0.001±0.26
    • vlog-0.054-0.055 Δ-0.001±0.25
    • none0.0900.091 Δ+0.001±0.26
    • topic_40.1640.164 Δ-0.000±0.25
    • number_list-0.128-0.128 Δ+0.000±0.25
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