The Biggest Dilemma As a youtube creator

​

I upload long form educational videos, stickman animation type. To keep it simple.

I once uploaded a video, it immediately got a surge of suggested impressions, but the ctr was at a measly 2%, so I swapped the thumbnail. It went to about 3% again, avd got better, but then the impressions flatlined again. Ctr stuck at 2.5%. i asked studio ai my browse impressions, it showed 7% with 300 browse impressions, and 2% in suggested with 2500 suggested impressions.

And then I uploaded another video, where without changing the thumbnail brought up my initially failing ctr but it flatlined again, but then i noticed after some time the video got picked up again on it's own.

How is a creator supposed to know if the thumbnail has failed or the impression batch is currently paused?

Imagine you upload the most optimised, top 1% thumbnail, but youtube tests it against a wrong audience of 1500 impressions then flatlines because of low ctr. You mistake it for a bad thumbnail and then change and iterate to the one that gets you views in a short time and spikes ctr, but then youtube actually finds your audience. Now because your Thumbnail isn't the original one and optimised for a wrong cluster, now that the audience that youtube was initially supposed to find is found, they dont click as much as they possibly could've ideally or even bring down your AVD.

I also don't like how as a small youtuber with low subs if youtube suggests you to the audience of wrong videos despite all the meta data optimisation you can't really do anything about it and wait while your competitors race ahead with their initial subscriber seed audiences. I understand algorithms work in power laws, but there seems to be something flawed here.