Katie Novotny was already a strong content creator with an audience that responded to her comedy. What she needed was a launch strategy capable of turning that attention into something much harder to earn: people choosing to watch her self-produced, 36-minute comedy special.
With Katie focused on creating and promoting Son of Your Dreams, Creatives Meet Marketing built and managed the marketing system behind its release.
During the campaign, Son of Your Dreams received:
These were not simply inexpensive clicks sent to inflate the public view count. The campaign was built to attract viewers who would actually stay, watch, and connect with Katie’s work.
The launch also created an ongoing promotional system. After our engagement ended, Katie continued releasing six CMM-edited clips from the special. Together, those clips generated 139,202 Instagram views, while the full special continued gaining YouTube views.
Katie had a completed, self-produced comedy special and an established ability to create engaging social content. What she did not have was the launch infrastructure needed to move her audience from short-form entertainment to a long-form YouTube special.
CMM created the launch strategy, landing page, embedded video experience, email automation, paid advertising campaigns, and watch-depth tracking.
We also developed new promotional concepts and edited a bank of short-form videos Katie could continue posting after the initial campaign ended.
The campaign helped the special reach 13.7K views and 2,000 watch hours while maintaining meaningful viewer retention. It also gave Katie an owned landing page, an automated email journey, performance data, and a library of promotional content that extended the life of the launch.
A view alone does not tell you whether someone watched ten seconds or stayed for the story.
Because the goal was to build a real audience for the special, we created a dedicated landing page with the YouTube video embedded directly on it. Tracking was installed at the 25%, 50%, 75%, and 100% completion points so we could evaluate the quality of the traffic—not simply the cost of acquiring it.
During the final reporting period, Katie’s website accounted for 43.2% of the special’s external YouTube traffic, showing that the launch system was actively directing viewers from the campaign to the full performance.
The average viewer watched for more than eight minutes, and 68% were still watching after the first 30 seconds. For a 36-minute special, those numbers offered much stronger proof than the view count alone.
The campaign was not left on autopilot.
When Google and YouTube limited part of the advertising campaign, we appealed the decision and shifted the available budget toward the strongest-performing Meta campaigns.
We also briefly tested a broader, volume-focused setup when the visible view count became a concern. That approach produced more inexpensive traffic, but the watch-quality data declined. We returned to the original qualified-view strategy and continued optimizing for people who were more likely to stay.
That decision protected the result that mattered most: meaningful watch time.
Our work was designed to support more than release day.
CMM edited six additional clips from the special so Katie would have a bank of ready-to-publish content after the engagement concluded. As she released those videos, they generated more than 139K Instagram views, including one clip that reached over 53K views and received more than 3,600 likes.
During that same post-engagement period, the full special added another 1,065 YouTube views.
Rather than leaving Katie with a campaign that stopped when the ads ended, the launch gave her a landing page, an email system, useful performance data, and months of promotional material she could continue using.
A creator can already have strong social engagement and still need a dedicated system for moving viewers to a longer piece of work.
Tracking retention helped us distinguish qualified viewers from low-cost traffic that was unlikely to stay.
The landing page, email automation, tracking system, and edited content bank continued supporting the special after the initial engagement ended.
