Content marketing guides and advice from the social media platforms themselves are replete with such vague notes as: "Create quality content." But just what does that really mean? In a social media context, exactly what qualifies as "quality content"?

Of course, it's subjective. Millions of young viewers, for example, will call "Skibidi Toilet," where heads pop out of toilets and come alive, quality content. But to outsiders, that makes no sense.

But even so, there are certain expectations and markers that point toward content quality, which YouTube has sought to uncover in its latest report.

YouTube's "Why We Watch 2.0" report merges the insights of thousands of viewers based on surveys and studies to understand better what they look for in YouTube content, says a report.

It builds on the 32-page first "Why We Watch" report YouTube released last year as part of its research aimed at understanding what people look for in YouTube content.

This second overview digests more of what makes people stick around and keep coming back for more to a channel.

You can download the full report for yourself here, but in this post, we're going to look at some of the key notes.

As noted, the motivation for this report was to look into the culture of the YouTube viewer, and what keeps them coming back.

And according to the data of YouTube, of all such motivators, community is the most important:

"Overall, more than half of viewers feel that their content choices together make them feel part of a whole, and a majority of younger viewers say that being able to watch content on services like YouTube or Twitch makes viewers feel they are really seen and understood. Surprisingly, the least likely platform to make viewers feel that way were the major broadcasting media: Just over one-third of viewers say that TV makes them feel part of something larger than themselves."

According to YouTube, in this regard, the days of appointment television are gone; now, where viewers find that same community engagement is online content and not television events.
On specifics, viewers want to watch contents of high quality, though quality in this case relates more to emotional resonance than special effects.
All subjects agree that the highest emotional marker is that a content should grab and hold one's attention. While beyond this, there is different value for viewers older than 35, trustworthiness and compelling storytelling are most important, whereas younger viewers rank creativity and personal relevance ahead of those.
Now, this bears a slight similarity to the "quality content" advice that I jotted in the intro since it's one thing to say "create engaging content" and quite another to actually do it. A key point here is that people are looking for well-written, human-centered content, which in the push towards generative AI seems increasingly to be overlooked.

Because while the newest video creation tools can give you incredibly realistic and engaging results, they're missing that special ingredient-the human insight that viewers are pointing to here.

Actually, as YouTube further points out:

Where once people might've been eagerly anticipating the next big special-effects extravaganza, our data reveals that the number of viewers who care only about visuals has become vanishingly small -- less than 1%. Audiences have come to crave a deeper connection with what they consume, and even the most traditional media has had to make a change.

It's not just great visualization that draws one in; it is human-centric storytelling, which generative AI tools cannot recreate.

Yet. Maybe someday generative AI will be able to stitch together a set of resonant stories. But every time there is a new innovation in AI animation and somebody shares it on social with the assertion that "Pixar is in trouble", it's useful to remember that Pixar movies and indeed all films don't succeed purely due to technical budgets.

It takes Pixar writers two years, give or take, to come up with the initial outline for each film-this is the bulk of production time for each project. And note, this is with a team of writers.

That human center is the critical pillar of the entire process.

Digging in to more specifics of "quality" YouTube also found that young viewers are more interested in creativity, while older viewers focus more on accuracy.
The report also looks at how that sense of community engagement relates to ads on YouTube, with viewers becoming increasingly receptive to ads on the service in support of the creators they like.
Of course, the first point, "interesting and engaging", is on YouTube's targeting systems to make sure that you are only shown relevant ads. Outside of that, as you can see, YouTube viewers are more accepting of ads than viewers elsewhere.

There are some interesting considerations here, and some interesting notes on what "quality" actually means in a video content context.

It's not necessarily spelt out, and the definitions of such will vary from group to group and topic to topic. But there are some helpful pointers here as to what helps build community around content and how you can use that in your approach.