Do Paid Promotions Harm Your YouTube Channel Growth?

I debated using promotions for my brand new channel but ultimately decided to grow it organically first. I was worried that if I relied on ads, my audience wouldn’t find me naturally. After some time, I realized that building a genuine community is far more beneficial than quick growth through paid ads.

From my experience, introducing paid promotions can disrupt YouTube's algorithm. The algorithm learns from organic engagement, and when you inject a sudden influx of views from ads, it may not perform optimally afterward. YouTube tries to create audience avatars based on your initial viewers, and if those are artificially inflated, it can skew the data they use to recommend your content.

I also tried paid promotions early in my YouTube journey. I found that most of the subscribers I gained were bots rather than genuine viewers. After promoting a video, I released a new one without any advertising and only got a fraction of views from my new subscribers. This made me realize that the investment wasn't worth it since it didn’t translate into real engagement.

One important thing to keep in mind is that views from promotions are not eligible for YouTube Partner Program (YPP) monetization. This means even if you gain subscribers through paid ads, those views won’t contribute to your watch time requirements. I learned this the hard way, and it’s crucial to understand before investing money into promotions.