YouTube and TikTok Push For 'Satisfaction'
Should brands avoid 'brain rot'?
The Oxford University Press word of the year is “brain rot.”
Brain rot of course is the kind of funny, kind of not metaphor for the way it feels when people spend too much time scrolling through a vapid social media. In the coming year, it may be something that the top video platforms, and even brands, may want to avoid.
When advertising on platforms like YouTube and TikTok, “I think there is so much room for brands, to not just blend in, not just fall into the trap of brain rot content,” said Aditi Rajvanshi, Head of Strategy at Portal A.
Portal A is a studio/agency that works to create branded content and creator-driven initiatives for marketers such as Target and Lenovo. Rajvanshi joined the company a few years ago after a decade-plus career in web video, including a long stint at YouTube.
I had Rajvanshi on my Next in Creator Media podcast this week. She said she’s noticing a greater emphasis from YouTube, TikTok and other platforms on trying to engineer and measure more quality, or ‘satisfactory’ user experiences - e.g., the opposite of brain rot. She’s encouraging marketers to do the same.
“Every platform, whether it's the TikTok algorithm or the Instagram algorithm, the goal is to increase time spent on the platform.” she said. “In the last couple of years, YouTube has been talking about this metric… of viewer satisfaction.”
“The way they define viewer satisfaction is a combination of time spent on the platform along with session time,” she added. “So basically, they're saying, ‘did this piece of content engage the viewer enough to watch it as much as possible?’ And then, ‘did it satisfy the viewer enough for them to continue watching more stuff on the platform and continue to prolong their session?’”
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Session time is seen by these platforms as an indicator of a user having a positive, continuous experience (which for sure, is debatable). Rajvanshi said that YouTube, TikTok and others don’t want to be known for zombifying users, and making them feel empty.
All of which could have big ramifications for the kind of content that gets produced, the types of creators that resonate, and brands’ strategies.
For example, “we are very bullish on episodic content,” said Rajvanshi. Even as YouTube, TikTok and Instagram have gone back and forth on being vehicles for serialized shows, Rajvanshi thinks that is changing.
“One of the things that TikTok has told us is that people can spend up to 40 minutes with that short form content,” she said. “What is stopping us from saying that short-form content cannot become episodic in nature? Or before you know it, you've actually seen 10 shorts or 10 TikToks because they're all part of this series.”
That sounds like a lot more satisfactory binge. It’s the kind of work Portal A is developing with creators such as Gawx for Lenovo and others.
Rajvanshi urges more brands get on board with this kind of thinking - intimating that over time, brands being perceived as contributing to brain rot will suffer reputationally.
“Instead of making more stuff that just feeds the algorithm…drives the scroll, [brands] should actually build stuff that helps people stop the scroll.”
The hard part may be convincing marketers that playing the algorithm hits isn’t the way to go - since the numbers look so good - and that being associated with or contributing to brain rot is really bad for their brands. That will likely require more quantitative research (brand lift, associations, etc) and may be outside the scope of the tech platforms.
Still, Rajvanshi is hoping that marketers break out of their addiction to ‘trying to go viral.’
“There is this constant struggle of ‘we want the metrics, we want the views, we want the virality’…versus. making content that is really premium, really representative of the brand's overall ethos,” she said. “So at times it feels like those two instincts are at odds with each other.”
Meanwhile, here’s some of Portal A’s recent work:
