The verdict you asked for: stop the promos. All of them.
This week's data closes the case. Paid views don't hold (promoted Shorts averaged 3–8 seconds per view), paid subs don't watch (of 145 new subscribers, 144 came from the ad unit and only 1 from actually watching a video), and your organic engine just showed its first real pulse without any help. There is exactly one defensible future spend — it's at the bottom, and it can wait until 21 August.
What the money actually bought
| Signal | Number | Read |
|---|---|---|
| Ad views (7d) | 5,927 raw → 2,616 engaged | 56% of paid plays are instant skips |
| Promoted Shorts hold | 3.4–8.3s average view | Paid swipe traffic — worthless for the algorithm |
| Long-forms under paid mix | ~34% held vs 53–59% organic lifetime | Paid viewers dilute your retention stats |
| Subscribers | +145; 144 ad-unit, 1 content-earned | Real accounts, low intent — subscriber-source views were just 25 all week |
The strategic cost nobody invoices: YouTube learns from your audience. A subscriber base that never watches teaches the algorithm your content doesn't convert — which suppresses exactly the organic reach we're trying to build.
The organic pulse — it's started
| Source (7d, engaged views) | Views | Watch min |
|---|---|---|
| Shorts feed — first real showing | 54 | 16 |
| Playlists (deepest: 2.5 min/view) | 41 | 104 |
| Subscribers | 25 | 44 |
| Suggested + search + other | ~32 | ~47 |
~152 engaged organic views this week — versus ~128 in the entire previous 28 days. The Shorts feed opened its door (a row that didn't exist at all last month). This happened before the hook-first cuts, the chant sheets, or the matchday engine exist. The levers we've built press directly on the things now moving.
The overlooked win: your CTR data
| Video | Impressions | CTR | Action |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pressure Makes Warriors | 67 | 8.96% | Thumbnail works — needs surface area |
| Loose Cannons Live | 223 | 8.52% | Same — excellent packaging |
| Built Different | 190 | 6.84% | Healthy |
| Midnight Run | 330 (most shown) | 3.03% | Run your prepared A/B thumbnail test |
| Welcome To The Crest | 286 | 1.75% | Weakest — test it too |
Anything above ~4–5% CTR at these impression levels is genuinely good. Your two most-shown videos convert worst — and you already made the A/B thumbnails (they're sitting in the roguecanon folder with a documented test plan). This is the highest-leverage free move available: YouTube Studio → each video → Test & Compare → upload the three prepared thumbs.
Next 7 days, ranked by leverage
Pause all four active promos
Today. Every day they run adds swipe-junk to your stats and teaches the algorithm the wrong lesson.
Launch the thumbnail tests (Midnight Run + Crest)
Studio → Test & Compare with your prepared A/B/C sets. 600+ impressions/week are currently converting at 2–3%.
Deploy roguecanon.com
Chant sheets + nav are staged. This is the site-engagement engine — then I push chant-sheet links into descriptions and pinned comments by API.
Cut and post S1 (We Don't Break matchday cut)
The Shorts feed just proved it will carry you — 54 engaged views on old cuts. Give it the hook-first format.
Community poll Sunday
158 subscribers now — most brand new. One poll converts passive ad-subs into invested voters.
The one promo I'd ever bring back
The case: a single £50–75 subs-goal burst (Underdog/Loose Cannons creative, ~29p/sub) in the week before the season opener (Fri 21 Aug) — if and only if crossing 1,000 subscribers before kickoff matters for social proof and unlocking YPP review sooner. That's a branding argument, not a growth argument: paid subs won't watch, and the 4,000 watch-hours YPP requires can only come from real viewers anyway.
My recommendation: hold even that. Decide in mid-August with six weeks of organic data. If the matchday engine is compounding, you won't want it; if it isn't, we'll know exactly what to fix instead of papering over it with spend.