Why We Stopped Putting a Score at the Top of Our Own Product

The tempting move

The easy path is a softer claim. Stop saying a high score earns more views and start saying it is associated with stronger packaging, which sounds careful while leaving the same impression behind. Every reader still walks away believing the number predicts performance, because that is what a big number at the top of a report means.

We decided that a claim you technically did not make is still a claim you made.

What a score can honestly be

A linter for code does not promise your product will sell. It tells you that a line is unreachable, a variable is unused, a bracket is missing. It is enormously useful and it makes no claim about outcomes at all.

That is what packaging scoring is. It tells you your title buries its payoff, your thumbnail is unreadable at feed size, your hashtags read as spam. Craft conformance, not a forecast.

So we led with the things that have a right answer

Some of what we measure is not a matter of opinion at all. Your audio is either at the platform's delivery loudness or it is not. Your opening either has a cut in the first three seconds or it does not. There is a correct value, and we can tell you your distance from it.

Those became the headline. The score is still there, and it is still useful for comparing drafts of the same video, but it stopped being the promise.

What we hold ourselves to now

• •Every problem we report is a measurement taken off your file, not an inference about your audience.
• •No copy anywhere on the site claims a score predicts views, reach or growth.
• •When a number comes from a small sample, we say the sample size next to it.
• •When our own research undercuts our product, we publish it. This post exists because of that rule.

Keep reading

• We Scored 1,655 Videos to See If Packaging Predicts Views. It Does Not.
• What Scoring Hundreds of Real Videos Taught Us