Launch strategy and iteration

Chana covers thumbnails, A/B testing, newsletter bump, social posts, and midweek launch timing.

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Note: I used LLMs to draft different parts of this. I've checked almost everything, but there might be some mistakes remaining.

Apologies for posting this on Christmas Eve. I wanted to get this out the door before the end of the year. Questions welcome, and if it's easy to pull metrics to answer them, I will.

Summary

80,000 Hours launched a video program in 2025 focused on longform, cinematic, personality-driven content about AI risks. Our first two longform releases were:

We're Not Ready for Superintelligence (the "AI 2027" video): 8.9M views, ~1.4M watch hours
If you remember one AI disaster, make it this one (the "MechaHitler" video): 2.7M views, ~419K watch hours

Both videos significantly outperformed our expectations (we'd anticipated 15-50K views for the first). The cost per engagement hour ($0.11 and $0.39 respectively, including staff time) compares favorably to other 80,000 Hours programs.

This post covers: what we spent, what we got, why we think it worked, and what we'd do differently.

The numbers

Costs

CategoryAI 2027MechaHitlerDirect costs~$50K~$64KStaff hours~450 hrs~450 hrs (Note, I’m assuming it's about the same as for AI 2027, I didn't re-ask people how much time they spent.)Total cost (making some assumptions about we should incorporate staff [...]

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Outline:

(00:34) Summary

(01:33) The numbers

(01:36) Costs

(02:16) Timing

(02:40) Results

(03:46) How valuable is a video watch hour?

(04:24) Qualitative Feedback

(04:28) AI 2027

(05:51) MechaHitler

(06:12) YouTube commenters like: