YouTube, X, Instagram and Facebook: what the experts say

What changed for him. Mike X: "That's your biggest asset, and it changes where free videos go." The rest of last night's plan stands.

The tradeoff, his way. Keep your hours at about 15 a week, split differently, not added to. Free posts pick which ads get the money: "Not a dollar of media should be spent on creative that does not get views organically" (17 March 2026). Free posting time isn't stolen from ads. It chooses them.

1. Weekly long YouTube as ads: not yet. Start his free weekly recording from 30 October: 30 to 45 minutes, unscripted, you and Nick answering comment questions, cut by Claude into 8 to 10 shorts. Buy YouTube ads only behind a recording that already won free.

• Your friend won on a story. Yours (ad agency founder, a past supplement brand, Mike X, a book) has never been tested on camera.
• Cost: you 1.5 hours a week, Nick 1. $0 until a winner.
• This week: film a 60 to 90 second "Why I started Opus" and post it free. If it doubles the usual views, that's your long-form.
• By late November we'd know. If two recordings' shorts beat the usual, test YouTube ads with the product feed, with money moved from the weakest Meta ad set.

2. Daily no-product shorts: yes, on Mike X, not the Opus accounts. His own business runs on his personal brand. His caveat: quiet accounts must earn their reach back, and your old followers came for life advice.

• "Jab, jab, jab, right hook": six free videos, then a seventh like "Exactly what I take, and when", with opus.life in the bio.
• He'd film them: 7 a week, about 7 hours of yours in one batch afternoon, inside the 15, Claude drafting scripts. Nick's team 2 to 3 hours, posting to Mike X TikTok, Instagram, Facebook and YouTube Shorts.
• In 2 weeks we'd know Mike X's usual views per video. Any video at twice that gets the product added and goes into ads. First winner in 3 to 4 weeks: "the first three, four weeks are going to be a disaster."

3. X: not now. Reserve the name this week, and have Claude post each week's winning video there. "I still believe in replying to everyone on Twitter" (20 February 2026). A conversation 90% run by Claude isn't you, and you are what works. Cost: Nick's team 30 minutes a week. Nothing expected for about 12 weeks.

4. Instagram and Facebook: stop stills as the main thing. "Less than 5% of their consumption ... is happening on your grid" (11 October 2026).

• @opuslongevitylabs (3,472): one Reel a day from finished TikTok videos (12 are in Nick's main-account folder), clean, no watermark. Carousels two a week, only remakes of @longevity.lab.notes slideshows that sold.
• Facebook OpusLongevityLabs (209): no separate work. Share every Reel there. "Your real Facebook is Mike X," with 162,638.
• Mike X on Instagram and Facebook becomes the second account on each. No-product videos on Mike X, product videos on Opus. Once a week, a joint "Collab" post so an Opus video also reaches Mike X's 82K on Instagram (his idea; Collab posts aren't in our research).
• Run Meta winners from the free Reel itself, so likes carry over. Reply to every comment and DM on Opus; under 10,000 followers it's the cheapest growth. One Monday number: free views per post, per account.
• Cost: Nick's team about 3 hours a week. You: none. $0. This week: swap the stills planned for Tuesday 20 to Sunday 25 October for 6 Reels.

We don't have a Google Ads committee yet, so four Google Ads experts from our research answered, with six others.

Where they agree:

• All 10: not weekly now. Ani: "Ads don't need a new long video weekly. They need one long ad that converts, run for months, with fresh short cuts around it."
• The short cuts are the bigger prize, because they feed Meta and TikTok, where the money already works (Ryan, Plofker, Denney, Hormozi).
• Your story is the hook. Ani says what's missing is your personal "why": why longevity, why now, what made you angry. Put it in the first 30 seconds.
• Weekly would take 5 to 25 hours a week of yours (Geddes lowest, Holiday highest).
• The four Google Ads experts: attach the product feed (our product list, so the products show under the video), let Google go for the most sales with no target cost per sale, and (Ryan, Geddes, Kirk Williams) change the budget no more than 10 to 15% a week. Not Performance Max, Google's all-in-one automatic campaign (Ryan: 74% to 97% of its spend goes to Shopping listings, so the video barely runs).

The test each would run, in two camps:

Test soon, small and capped

Wait first: Meta at break-even, or for Gary a free winner

Holiday: a real read takes $2,000 to $3,000 and 4 to 6 weeks. "We can't fund that wait now."

Weekly or one. Denney and Gary would record weekly, for cuts and free posts, not YouTube ads. Everyone else: one video.

When to stop or keep going.

• Geddes: at break-even, spend more. Between 0.6 and break-even, two more weeks if searches for our names are up 30%. Under 0.6, stop.
• Kirk Williams: at 0.8 of break-even or better, counting Google's sales and our own checks together, go weekly. Under 0.5, stop.
• Ryan: keep going if Google shows a sale for every $80 or less. Stop if it's worse than one per $150.
• Ani: if a new order costs about $41 or less for two weeks running, make a second long ad each month.

Does your following matter here? Kirk Williams: not for who sees the ads; Google picks its own audiences, and 12.2K YouTube subscribers is too few. But you're at ease on camera (992 TikTok videos), and your reach is proof worth mentioning. Galloway: start a new Opus channel; your following belongs in your story.

Mike X. Quiet since mid-2024, when you stopped your ten one-minute videos a week on living a good life. Every expert knew it was different content.

Daily shorts that don't mention Opus. All 7 who spoke to it said yes, on Mike X (Gary's view is in his section):

• Hormozi: only free versions of the ad videos. His views rose two to three times on off-topic content and his ad revenue halved. Start with the 10 best ad cuts of the last two weeks, one a day from Monday.
• Allison Ellsworth: 3 to 5 a week, daily only if earned. A bridge: "For two years I told you how to live well. Here's what I learned about living longer, and why I started a company." A free routine in the bio for an email; email sells.
• Dara Denney: daily, never filmed separately. Any short at twice your usual views gets a product ending and goes into Meta.
• Paddy Galloway: no to daily new shoots (6 to 10 hours a week from ads); yes to cuts with the product lines removed. Shorts links can't be clicked, so sales can't be measured.
• Jack Appleby: 3 to 4 a week, ending before the product. If a rival could post it unchanged, it's filler: your own routine passes, generic tips fail.
• Joel Contartese: a two-week test, one a day, from footage already shot.

Which accounts: Mike X TikTok, Instagram and Facebook; Gary and Galloway add YouTube Shorts. Product videos stay on Opus.

X. All 7 who answered said not now, and reserve the names (Gary's view is in his section):

• Hormozi: under $1M a year, go all in on one channel. Look again when Meta is above 1.2 for a month.
• Plofker: never a brand account. Start your personal X once Meta holds break-even two weeks, for podcast invites, partners and press, not sales.
• Holiday: right room for investors and press, wrong room for a 35 to 65 supplement buyer. The CEO of Create, a creatine brand, drew 359,403 views on a post about raising money: press and investors, not orders.
• Appleby: "I wouldn't recommend any brands make social content that can clearly be seen as AI-created." Put Claude's writing into Nick's slideshows instead: @longevity.lab.notes made sales with 21 followers and no ad money.
• Ellsworth: 90% Claude in your voice cuts against her rule that the community hears the founder.
• Contartese: spend that Claude time on creator briefs for TikTok Shop.

If we started X anyway, most said it would still take 2 to 3 hours a week of yours, for the replies Claude can't write.

• Gary Vaynerchuk: the person you asked about; free posts first, ad money behind winners.
• Kirk Williams: Google Ads and Shopping for online stores.
• Mike Ryan: Google Ads data across many online stores.
• Brad Geddes: Google Ads testing and measurement.
• Menachem Ani: Google Shopping and product feeds for online brands.
• Paddy Galloway: YouTube strategist.
• Dara Denney: Meta and TikTok video ads, founder-story scripts.
• Taylor Holiday: ad economics; profit is the only scorecard.
• Alex Hormozi: offers and volume; judges content by sales, not views.
• Cody Plofker, with Connor MacDonald and Connor Rolain: Marketing Operators; ads and free posts as one team.
• Joel Contartese: Bloom Nutrition, a supplement brand built on TikTok Shop creators.
• Allison Ellsworth: Poppi's founder; founder on camera and community.
• Jack Appleby: creative strategy; fewer, better ideas.

Mike X (read from your public profiles Friday afternoon, about 5:25pm Pacific): TikTok 288,300 (992 videos), Facebook 162,638, Instagram 82K, YouTube 12.2K.

Opus accounts, same time: TikTok @opus.longevity.science 4,723, @sulforaphane.longevity 1,458, @nmn.science 408, @longevity.lab.notes 21, @broqespanol 1. Instagram @opuslongevitylabs 3,472. Facebook OpusLongevityLabs 209. No Opus YouTube channel, no X account.

Instagram and Facebook in October: one still a day on both, no Reels. The nine measured (6 to 14 October) reached 6 to 20 people each on Instagram, 7 to 54 on Facebook. Likes near zero. No sales.

Meta: from 0.15 of break-even to 0.96 in a week on video ads with you on camera; 0.71 for 13 to 15 October. $336.66 a day.

TikTok GMV Max: about $2.10 to $3.38 per $1, depending on how it's counted, against $2.79 to break even. $200 a day.

Google's rules:

• Don't judge before about 50 sales: about $2,000 at BROQ's $40.74 break-even per first order (Kirk Williams, Ani).
• Budget at least 10 times your target cost per sale each day: about $400 a day, more than all of Meta. That rule is for ads set to a target cost per sale. The tests here set no target, so they can run smaller, but they start slowly (Ani).
• Only about 40% of these sales show up in Google's own report (Google's Harikesh Nair). An outside study of 190 tests (Haus) found YouTube's real effect on sales was 3.4 times what Google reported.
• Adding the product feed: 33% more sales at a similar cost (Google's average).

Break-even: BROQ keeps $40.74 on a first order. Geddes puts YouTube break-even at $1.59 to $1.73 in sales for every $1 of ads. Meta now pays about $80 for each new customer ($1,353 for 17). Holiday uses our average TikTok order, about $56 (62 orders, $3,472.98).

What blocks YouTube ads today: Google can't see purchases on the site yet; the Merchant Center owner isn't confirmed and the barcode numbers (UPCs) aren't in Shopify; there's no Opus YouTube channel; and Google may treat supplements as a sensitive health topic, which limits who we can aim ads at and may rule out ads to past visitors and our customer lists (Ryan, Kirk Williams). No disease claims in the video.

Search ads on our own names (Geddes). We rank first for our names, but four rivals bid on "BROQ sulforaphane", and a Mara Labs video there says BROQ "is now a glucoraphanin product with no sulforaphane". He'd run ads on our names first, $5 to $10 a day. It's also the cheapest read of whether YouTube lifts searches.

Ask your friend four things (Galloway): how long his videos ran, how many he made, how often he changed them, and his daily spend.

A "How did you hear about us?" question after checkout (Holiday, Kirk Williams, Ani). Free, and it catches what Google misses.

The stills-only plan on Instagram and Facebook was a choice made on 30 September, and the next two weeks of stills (20 October to 2 November) are planned and waiting for approval. Moving to Reels is a call for you and Nick together.

Not in our files: your friend's story, budget and numbers; any supplement brand's YouTube ad results; our YouTube cost per sale; views of our 45 earlier Reels; how many Mike X followers still see your posts; who runs the Mike X accounts today.