The Problem with growing a Podcast on YouTube

I launched my educational Game Development Podcast last month on all platforms, including YouTube. I thought that I had the advantage that I could show gameplay of the games I am playing to engage the audience, thus combining audible content with some (admittedly sub-par) video content. Although I promoted the content well and got around 2300 views in this time, it only resulted in an underwhelming 46 subscribers on the platform. Video analytics also show very poor user engagement and fast viewer drop off, with most stopping to watch after the first three minutes. Here is what I learned:

• YouTube is a platform for fast paced video content that is easily consumed and engaging
• The audience has a low attention span. They expect to be constantly entertained with throw-in gags or jump cuts, thus a long, informative discussion does not work too well at all by itself
• The video is just as important on YouTube, even if that's clearly not the focus for a podcast. In one of my episodes, two people commented on the game that was showing i.e. the gameplay video, which threw me off because I was hoping people were listening and the video would be a side thing

That said, YouTube is still VERY big and important distribution. You can easily embed videos into any social media site, making them easy to share (the same cannot be said about most podcast platforms). My goal is to the do the following:

• Make video more personal and engaging by adding a face cam. Many vloggers just speak in front of the camera, granted its well edited most of the time, but either way it seems to work
• Change up the intro by starting out with a personal address to the audience, explaining the video and encouraging them to also subscribe on other platforms more suited for podcast consumption

I'm curious to see how this pans out! Tell me what you think of this plan in the comments :)