The neuroscience of social video — and how AI predicts what works before you spend.

Less than two seconds. That’s how long your brand has before the thumb decides: keep watching, or scroll past for good.

I spend a lot of time looking at what happens in that window. At Brainsuite, my work sits at the intersection of neuroscience, AI, and the realities of modern content, analyzing hundreds of thousands of social media assets to understand what actually drives performance in the feed. And the pattern is consistent: brands invest heavily in targeting, media spend, and campaign optimization, then approve the creative itself by committee and gut feel.

The feedback loop only closes after the budget is spent.

Here’s what makes that costly. Creative is the single biggest driver of sales. Nielsen puts it at 49% of a campaign’s incremental sales — more than targeting, reach, and recency combined. Yet in most organizations it remains the softest, most subjective part of the process. The brief gets refined. The targeting gets optimized. The creative gets a round of feedback and a thumbs up.

The real question — does this visual or video actually stop the scroll, anchor the brand, and move people further down the funnel? — rarely gets a data-backed answer before launch.

That’s the gap we’re closing. Drawing on neuroscientific research and the analysis of hundreds of thousands of social media assets, we’ve built AI that predicts creative performance before you spend, at the scale and speed of modern content demands. Not just whether people stop, but whether the creative builds brand recognition, activates emotion, and drives action.

At DMWF New York this September, my colleague Karel Ellis-Gray and I will be on the AI-Powered Automation & Lifecycle Marketing stage at 10am on Day 1 and we’d love for you to join us.

Our session, Stop the Scroll, Drive the Brand, covers the factors that make social video truly effective across brands, like Unilever, eBay and Kellanova and as a bonus, creator content. You’ll see how the best creative captures attention, activates emotion, and engages people to act, and how AI can now predict this before a single dollar of media spend is committed.

We’re presenting more than a theory. We’re sharing insights based on over 50,000 brand and creator videos, plus the practical principles your team can use immediately — to brief better, evaluate with confidence, and optimize social content with purpose, turning views into measurable brand and business impact.

We’ll also be at Booth #80 throughout the event, where you can see the platform score a live creative asset in under three minutes — including, if you’re feeling brave, one of your own.

The science of what makes creative work has been there for decades. What’s new is that AI can now apply it before launch, at scale, and in the time it takes to make a coffee. That’s the change we’ll be unpacking on stage.

SPEAKERS

Vanessa Bohla  —  Senior Product Manager, Brainsuite

Karel Ellis-Gray  —  Head of Customer Success, Brainsuite