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Ran the same thumbnail through 8 emotional expressions. Results are not subtle. · Nadi

Diego Martinez6

3 days ago🔍 Teardowns

Ran the same thumbnail through 8 emotional expressions. Results are not subtle.

Same video, same title, same everything except the face. 8 variants, ~40k impressions each before I called it.

Confused / mouth open      8.4% CTR
Alarmed                    7.9%
Neutral, direct eye line   6.1%
Smiling, teeth             4.8%
Smiling, closed mouth      4.4%
Looking away from camera   3.9%
No face (object only)      3.7%
Laughing                   3.1%

Confusion beat everything. My read: a confused face is an unresolved question, and unresolved questions are the cheapest open loop there is. A smile is resolved — nothing to find out.

Caveat that matters: this is one channel, one topic, one face. Don't take the ranking, take the mechanism.

88 comments

Marek Kowalski43 days ago
Confusion beating alarm surprises me — I'd have bet on alarm. Have you tested confusion against a genuine question in the title, or does the face do something the words can't?
- Diego Martinez63 days ago
  Tested it. Question in the title plus neutral face underperforms confused face plus statement title, by about 1.4 points. My guess: the face is processed faster than the text, so it wins the first fixation.