YouTube is looking to provide another incentive for creators to reach channel milestones with new Achievement Cards that will be displayed within the YouTube Studio dashboard.

As you can see here, the new, emoji-based achievement notifications will show-up in YouTube Studio when channels reach certain levels, on various fronts. 

As explained by YouTube:

"Creators will see these cards when they're passing certain milestones, for example, around subscribers, views and watch time hours. The goal of this is to better recognize creators and their amazing work."

It seems like a fairly light way to promote increased YouTube activity, but it could be just the encouragement that some creators need to keep going, particularly in the early days of building their channel, when it feels like they're not getting much traction with their clips.

A simple, smiley face, telling you that you've reached 500 views, could be just what you need, when you need it, which could make this a more valuable addition than it may seem, on the face of it.

Or it could be nothing - how you view it will come down to your personal perspective.

YouTube will be experimenting with the achievement cards over the next few months, at least.

In addition to this, YouTube's also expanding its test of timed comments, which it initially launched back in April, to users on iOS and Android.

As you can see here, timed comments include a timestamp which indicates the specific moment in the clip that each comment is referring to. The idea is that this will provide more context for YouTube comments, while also highlighting which elements are generating the most discussion, which could prompt more engagement.

Time comments are now being rolled out in the YouTube mobile app.

And finally, YouTube has also issued a reminder that, as of July 23rd, all unlisted videos that were uploaded before January 1st 2017 will be switched to 'Private', as per its previously communicated change to unlisted posts. If you want your videos to remain unlisted, you will need to manually opt-out of the change before that date.

You can view YouTube's latest Creator Insider update for further context on these changes here.