YouTube · Metrics · Mid · 45 to 60 minutes

YouTube DAU growth has stalled

YouTube is a global video platform where people watch, share, and publish short and long form video content. Answer this product management case and get it graded line by line against a weighted rubric.

metric diagnosis
segmentation
growth strategy
prioritization
experiment design

The situation

The VP of Growth asks you, a PM on YouTube's core viewer experience team, for a plan before next quarter planning. Assume global DAU for the YouTube app has been flat for two quarters, even though YouTube remains massive and there is no obvious single outage or launch to blame. Leadership wants upward movement in daily usage, not just stable watch time or monthly reach. The hard part is that YouTube serves many audiences and surfaces, mobile, desktop, TV, Shorts, long form, subscriptions, recommendations, live, and notifications. A flat top line could mean saturation in one market, weaker new user activation, lower habit frequency among existing users, creator side shifts, or pressure from other apps competing for attention. You cannot investigate every theory or ship many large bets at once. Your job is to define what you need to learn, identify the most likely leak in the user journey, and recommend a focused set of product moves that could raise DAU without hurting the broader user experience.

What to produce

A 1 to 2 page written product diagnosis and recommendation memo.

Your answer must

State 5 to 8 clarifying questions or explicit assumptions that narrow scope across users, platform, market, timeline, and business goal.
Define the primary metric and 3 to 5 supporting metrics, including at least one habit or frequency metric such as DAU to MAU ratio or sessions per user per week.
Diagnose the most likely bottleneck in the user journey using acquisition, activation, retention, and return frequency, and explain why you would investigate that area first.
Propose 3 product opportunities aimed at distinct user states or segments, for example new users, current users, and dormant users, with expected upside and key risks.
Prioritize one near term bet and include a simple experiment plan with success metric, guardrail metric, and readout timeframe.

Constraints

Focus on viewer side product changes in YouTube's owned surfaces and channels, not paid acquisition, partnerships, or M and A.
Do not assume exclusive content deals, creator payout changes, or broad ad policy changes.
Recommend actions that a mid sized product, design, and engineering team could test within one quarter.

Format

Use sections for framing, diagnosis, options, and recommendation. A small prioritization table is encouraged.

How YouTube actually played it

Breaks down the prompt of a YouTube DAU plateau, reading each keyword of the question and then clarifying, diagnosing and prioritizing solutions.

Read the problem statement word by word
Define what growth means for a mature product
Prioritize solutions after diagnosis

Built from YouTube daily active users plateaued: a product growth case by Sreerag Panat.