When your favourite sports team wins in dramatic fashion, your heart skips a beat. When that TV show you’re addicted to throws in a major plot twist, your jaw drops. When a YouTube creator you’ve spent countless hours watching drops a new video, you’re hanging on their every word.
These feelings of high engagement, or a deep connection, are the holy grail for creators and marketers alike, because it means consumers are at their most receptive. It’s also been hard to quantify — until now.
A new brain imaging study helps marketers to better understand viewers’ depth of emotional engagement, how themes and ideas create long-term connections, and how informative or interesting content is encoded in memory.
Today’s markings of true content quality
Marketers have been searching for what makes best-in-class video content ever since the format became integral to the marketing arsenal. From tapping into the latest YouTube trends and harnessing the feel-good factor of wholesome content to understanding how best to connect with consumers on new platforms, such as YouTube Shorts.
The barriers to creating technically high quality content have been lifted, thanks to better quality technology and new AI tools. According to new research from Google and MTM — which surveyed 12,000 video viewers in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa — clear visuals, good audio, camera work and editing are all markers of quality.1
But technical excellence is only one element. It’s more subjective to measure the quality of content through how well viewers connect with it on emotional, relevancy, and personal levels. Four in five viewers say that high quality content means content that makes them feel like their time was well spent.2
They expect it to capture their attention and create an emotional connection. In fact, 9 in 10 say a marker of high quality content is that it delivers on both a technical and emotional level.3
Brain imaging shows how people light up in response to quality content
Google and neuroscience consultancy Neuro-Insight undertook a brain imaging study of more than 100 participants in the U.K. and Germany to understand how viewers reacted to more subjective elements of video content, such as entertainment, creativity, authenticity, and humour.
The study measured non-conscious neurological responses to participants watching video content on YouTube, using a method known as Steady State Topography (SST). It pinpoints neural activity in different parts of the brain, which align to emotional intensity, personal relevance, global memory, and detail memory.
The study compared viewers’ typical emotional responses with those when they watched content from their preferred creators. When viewers watched creators they felt close to, their emotional response was amplified, and they exhibited a stronger neurological memory response.4 This indicates that viewers are more likely to remember content from creators they felt they could relate to.
“The SST activity seen within audiences watching their preferred YouTube creators was at the higher end [of the spectrum],” explains Dr Richard Silberstein, Neuro-Insight’s founder and chief scientist.
“While we expected there to be strong peaks during the viewing periods, the data we saw was similar to what we would see with high production value TV content. This consistency in response indicates that there is a special connection between creators and viewers, in much the same way we create connections with our favorite TV shows and sports teams.”
Creating content that triggers positive neural responses
Marketers seeking to reach consumers at their most receptive should seek out content that resonates on a personal level, evoking strong emotions. This feeling of connection with creators isn't just a fleeting sensation; it's a neurological phenomenon that marketers can tap into to align with content that resonates as deeply as a winning goal or a shocking plot twist.
They can even aim to hit those same emotional and technical markers in their video ads. Creative guidance such as the ABCD framework for YouTube Ads showcases best practices for creatives. Through an understanding of the deep emotional connection viewers forge with their favourite creators, marketers can take inspiration, while exploring the emotional and storytelling potential of new formats and surfaces.
