The cat-fact Short that got 111 views: what that number does and does not mean

A plain explainer Short about why cats sleep so much: 111 views at 11 hours, 90% swiped away, 0 on TikTok. What one small number tells you. Run 2026-10-25; numbers read up to 2026-10-28.

Format: Faceless explainer Short, one fact, 29 seconds, vertical 9:16. Everything shown in the videos is AI-generated. Numbers are from our own accounts and are small; each carries the date it was read, because platform numbers change as a video ages. This page makes no promise of views.

What we made

This is a plain AI-generated explainer Short, "Why do cats sleep up to 20 hours a day?", made with StoryShort, AutoShort's sibling product, which makes short faceless videos in the same way. It is a single 29-second video, not a series, and it was not made from an MCP prompt we can show. The script text is not stored in our research files, so we do not reproduce it.

We reviewed it before posting (no defects found by our checks), and posted it on 2026-10-25 to a small YouTube channel and a small Facebook Page, both with the AI label on. It had already been posted to TikTok on 2026-10-16.

We include it because it is a useful reference point. On the same night, our best drama episode got almost exactly the same number of views, and a lot of what we first read as "the format works" was just this number.

Cost

Cost
What	Number	As of	Source file : line
Credit cost of this video	not recorded in our research files	checked 2026-10-29	storyshort-posts-2026-10-25.md:17
Length	29 seconds	ledger 2026-10-25	published.md:58

We did not look up what this video cost and will not guess. For comparison, a standard AutoShort short of up to 90 seconds is 40 credits with the default voice; that is the product price, not this video's record.

What the platforms showed

What the platforms showed
What	Number	As of	Source file : line
YouTube: views, and share who swiped away	111 views, 9.8% stayed to watch, 90.2% swiped away, 13 engaged views, average view 0:09 of 0:29	2026-10-26 08:20-08:45 ICT, 11.5 h after posting	measurements-2026-10-26-evening-posts.md:58
YouTube: later read	116 views, 12.3% stayed, 87.7% swiped away, 15 unique viewers	2026-10-28 06:38-06:50 ICT, 58 h after posting	measurements-2026-10-28-storyshort.md:13
The channel's median for its last five Shorts	13 views	2026-10-28 06:38-06:50 ICT	measurements-2026-10-28-storyshort.md:21
Facebook Page reel: views	228 views from 206 viewers, 0 reactions, 0 comments, 0 shares	2026-10-26 08:20-08:45 ICT, 11.4 h after posting	measurements-2026-10-26-evening-posts.md:63
Facebook Page reel: later read	242 views from 211 viewers, 3-second rate 14.5%	2026-10-28 06:38-06:50 ICT, 58 h after posting	measurements-2026-10-28-storyshort.md:33
TikTok (@storyshort65)	0 views	2026-10-28 11:28 ICT	baseline-tiktok.md:25

The two Facebook reads disagree on average watch time (3 s at 11.4 hours, 17 s at 58 hours). We cannot tell which one is right, so we do not rely on either. Reading Facebook insights adds an own view per page load, and none of these numbers were corrected for that. Platform numbers keep moving as the video ages.

What we learned

By 11.5 hours it had 111 views, and views barely moved afterwards (116 at 58 hours). The same pattern appeared on very different content on the same night, so it says little about this video.
Nine in ten viewers swiped away within seconds, which is the same hook problem every other video we measured had.
It is the best YouTube result on that small channel, and still only 116 views at 58 hours.
Facebook gave a few hundred strangers a look and nothing else: no comments, no shares, no follows to speak of. Reach is not interest.
TikTok never showed it at all.

What we would do differently

Test two different first seconds of the same fact instead of one version.
Record the script and the credit cost for every video we post, so the case study can be a recipe too.

The public videos

Links as recorded in our publishing ledger. Platforms can remove or restrict a video later.

Try the same kind of prompt

Try a one-fact explainer prompt. The draft and the estimate are free, and you decide on the render after reading the script.

Faceless explainer prompts and recipe Connect AutoShort to Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor or Gemini CLI Free script preview

A prompt does not make a video perform. It makes the script and the cost visible before you spend credits. Results of ours are above.

Data sources

Files in our internal research folders that every number on this page comes from:

growth-ops/research/animal-comedy-series-2026-10-23/measurements-2026-10-26-evening-posts.md
growth-ops/research/measurements-2026-10-28-storyshort.md
growth-ops/research/formula-batch-1-2026-10-28/baseline-tiktok.md
growth-ops/research/storyshort-posts-2026-10-25.md
growth-ops/ledger/published.md (public links)