Theia's first 100,000 views: four AI accounts, one week, one format that broke out

Theia is our AI content studio. She picks the idea, makes the film, posts it, reads the analytics and changes her own code. Each film records the exact version of the code that made it.

Until last week she ran one account. From 26 October she ran four, each a test account with its own character and its own daily film. This post covers the first week of all four: 42 posts from 26 October to 1 November. Between them, they passed 100,000 views for the first time.

For the story so far, read How Theia learned to make TikToks. Last week's post is What Theia learned, week 2. The numbers are real and unedited, including the bad ones.

The week in short

	26 Oct to 1 Nov
Accounts	4
Posts	42 (28 Instagram Reels, 14 TikToks)
Views	about 112,000
Views on Instagram	109,066 (97%)
Views on TikTok	2,883
Biggest film	40,846 views
Reels past 4,000 views	5

Views are each platform's own count, at the newest read, 1 to 7 days after posting. Instagram and TikTok count a view differently, so compare within a platform, not across.

The four accounts

Account	What it posts	Reels	Instagram views	Best Reel
Cleo	Glossy spoken scenes in London	6	95,430	40,846
Noor	A 90s romcom sitcom, from 1 Nov	6	5,725	4,986
Small Problems	Clay animation about daily annoyances	6	6,438	1,928
The first account	Heartbreak, one person on camera	10	1,473	174

One account made 85% of the views. That is the first thing to be honest about: this is one breakout and a few early signs, not four accounts growing.

What broke out

Five Reels passed 4,000 views. All five are the same kind of video: a spoken scene between people, 26 to 30 seconds long, with a line of conflict said in the first second and a clear turn at the end.

Film	Account	Length	Skip rate	Avg watch	Views
Be a love	Cleo	30 s	19%	26.4 s	40,846
Fat in that	Cleo	30 s	19%	23.0 s	30,106
Members only	Cleo	30 s	14%	26.1 s	12,335
Table for one	Cleo	30 s	16%	23.7 s	11,927
Mum's early	Noor	26 s	22%	16.5 s	4,986

Skip rate is Instagram's share of viewers who scroll past in the first seconds.

Cleo's first two films were a 13-second morning vlog and a 14-second train trip home. They got 81 and 135 views. On 29 October she moved to spoken scenes, and her first one got 30,106.

Noor made five films in other formats from 27 to 31 October, at 57 to 247 views. On 1 November she moved to a 90s sitcom with a laugh track, and that film got 4,986.

Skip rate split the winners from the rest

Every Reel past 4,000 views had a skip rate of 22% or less. Every Reel under 2,000 views had a skip rate of 30% or more. There was no overlap between the two groups.

Past 4,000 viewsUnder 2,000

Members only

14.3%

Table for one

16.4%

Be a love

19.3%

Fat in that

19.3%

Mum's early

22.3%

The chilli

29.7%

The tab

29.8%

The system

33.1%

How are you

38.9%

First account, best

33.3%

First account, worst

64.0%

The Paris trip

67.9%

Lower is better. The five Reels past 4,000 views all sit at 22% or less.

Average watch time points the same way. The five breakouts held people for 16.5 to 26.4 seconds on average. The first account's Reels held them for 4.9 to 7.3 seconds.

Length alone did not do it

It is easy to read the table above as "make 30-second films". The week says no. Noor's Paris trip ran 36 seconds, had a skip rate of 68% and got 57 views, the lowest of any Reel on the account.

Small Problems is the in-between case. Its first spoken episode, the tab, ran 29 seconds and doubled its average watch to 16.7 seconds. But its skip rate stayed at 30%, and its views stayed at 1,865, in line with the account's earlier best. Its first seconds still lose too many people.

So the length gave room for a story. What earned the views was that people did not scroll past at the start.

TikTok did not move

The same films also went to TikTok on two of the accounts. TikTok gave them 93 to 341 views each, whatever the format.

Film	Instagram	TikTok
The chilli	1,898	118
The system	1,928	123
The tab	1,865	93

The TikTok account for Small Problems is new and has 4 followers, so this may be the account and not the film. The first account's TikToks stayed at 225 to 318 views, the band it has been in since August. Neither of the two accounts that broke out on Instagram has posted to TikTok yet, so no film that won on Instagram has been tested there.

Views are not followers yet

Cleo's 95,000 views brought her from 883 to 970 followers. That is less than one new follower per 1,000 views. Almost all of her views came from people who did not follow her. Likes ran at about 1 per 100 views on the biggest films.

People watched to the end. Few of them came back for more.

What we cannot claim yet

• That it repeats. Cleo's last two films got about 12,000 each, down from 40,846. One week is not a trend.
• Why TikTok is flat. We have a guess, the account and not the film, and no test of it yet.
• That skip rate causes views. It separated the two groups cleanly this week. Instagram may show more people a film because they stay, or people may stay because Instagram showed it to the right people. We cannot tell the two apart from this data.
• That the format is the reason. Each account changed more than one thing when it changed format.

Next week

The first account moves to the spoken format from 2 November, on both Instagram and TikTok. That is the first test of a spoken scene on TikTok: if it still stops at about 250, the film is not the problem. Small Problems works on its first seconds, where its skip rate is stuck at about 30%.

If you want the same loop on your brand's account, start with a pilot month. For how a loop like this works, and how it can go wrong, read Recursive self-improvement in practice: lessons from the STOP paper.