The New Era of Video: Understanding consumer behaviour
Welcome to the third and final chapter in our New Era of Video series. We’ve explored how AI-driven metadata and platform algorithms are transforming content discovery, as well as how video creation itself is evolving. But there’s one more shift that marketers must think about. How your audience behaviour is changing. What they watch and why. How long they engage. And what finally drives them to act.
Tl;dr
Consumers now move through a “Messy Middle” journey, looping and exploring before making decisions.
Short-form scrolling and long-form streaming both matter for building trust and engagement.
Youtube is uniquely positioned to connect across the entire customer journey.
Consistency, relevance, and smart AI tools are key to adapting your brand for today’s nonlinear behaviours.
Consumers are no longer on a straight path
If you're a marketer, you’re likely familiar with the marketing funnel. Today, that consumer journey has changed, because your audience doesn’t move in a straight line anymore.
Google calls this shift the Messy Middle - an unpredictable, nonlinear process of exploration and evaluation. It’s where a consumer might discover your brand in a short-form clip, get distracted, return via a long-form explainer, compare you to others, watch a review, and only then decide to engage.
Within that messy middle, the marketing rule of 7 suggests consumers today need to see your brand at least 7 times before making a purchase decision. That means a single ad or one-off piece of content is no longer enough. Your brand needs to live across an entire ecosystem of moments, each one meeting your audience at whatever point of the journey they’re at.
The Messy Middle is shaped by exposure, triggers, and reassurance. Your audience loops between seeing something new, being intrigued, and looking for evidence before they make a move. That might mean typing a search query, watching multiple perspectives, or rewatching product tutorials and reviews.
And this is exactly where video (and YouTube in particular) can help.
Video content lets you develop connection and trust with today's consumer in a way no other format can. And YouTube, as the world’s second-largest search engine, gives you the reach to be discovered and the depth to tell your story. Whether it’s Shorts that grab attention, how-tos that answer questions, or long-form narratives that share your brand story - video lets you show up and make an impact at every critical decision-making moment.
Scrolling vs. Streaming
As consumer’s habits, preferences, and buying decisions have become more diverse and scattered across many channels and influences, so have the ways they discover and evaluate brands. Today, people aren’t just watching one type of content, they’re shifting constantly between scrolling and streaming, often within the same day.
Some come in with clear intent, actively searching for solutions. Others stumble across a brand mid-scroll. Then there are those seeking depth, who turn to longer videos to understand a brand’s values, mission, or behind-the-scenes story.
Here’s how these behaviours can play out:
Streaming: This is where consumers go when they want substance. They’re looking for longer narratives, real insight, and the “why” behind your brand. These viewers are open to committing if you give them a reason to and arrive with deeper intent.
Scrolling: This is where consumers discover your brand in the scroll. These moments happen fast - a quick scroll, a compelling hook, a trusted voice. These are the touchpoints that create familiarity and intrigue before anything else.
Both behaviours matter and they feed each other. Someone might scroll past your brand ten times before they’re ready to commit to a deeper watch. Or they might find your long-form story first, and then stay connected through bite-sized content. In either case, your job is to show up consistently, purposefully and contextually across both formats and all touchpoints.
Attention is earned, not given
The average consumer today sees thousands of content pieces a day. Your video isn't competing just with other brands, it's competing with everything.
To stand out, you need more than just good content. You need a content strategy designed to earn trust over time and add real value to your audience's journey. Whether that’s:
Shorts that spark curiosity and build visual recognition.
Creators who bring credibility and social proof.
Long-form content that delivers your purpose, your value, and your difference.
And above all, you need consistency. People won’t remember your brand after one interaction. But they will if your voice, tone, and values show up again and again - repeating the same core message across multiple formats.
AI is transforming how we create and connect
In our previous article in this series, we explored how AI is already changing the way content is discovered - including how video surfaces in search and how algorithms serve it. But it’s not just discovery that’s evolving. AI is also changing how you can show up for your audience and adapt to the different consumer cultures.
It’s making production faster, but also making content smarter, more relevant, more personalised, and better suited to the non-linear journeys of your consumer.
From A/B testing thumbnails to tweaking captions and localising metadata for different regions, AI is giving marketers more tools to adapt in real time. Soon, you won’t need to create dozens of separate assets from scratch, you’ll be able to generate multiple versions of the same idea, each tailored to a specific persona or moment in the journey.
As these tools grow, the challenge won’t be speed, it’ll be staying intentional. Staying consistent, human, and on brand while letting AI do the heavy lifting behind the scenes.
How to stay on top of changing consumer behaviour
To succeed in this new landscape, brands need to shift from campaign thinking to ecosystem thinking.
Here’s where to start:
Map your audience’s journey. Not just where they watch, but how and why. What content triggers action? Where are they most open to influence?
Invest across formats. From short-form content to long-form narratives, every format plays a role in building trust.
Partner with creators who already have authority. Their audiences trust them. That trust transfers to you.
Use AI to scale smartly, not generically. Test different formats, thumbnails, and tones without losing your brand identity.
Conclusion
If today’s audiences seem harder to follow, it’s because their journeys are no longer strictly linear. The classic funnel still matters and you still need to build content that supports every stage of it, but audiences now move through it in more dynamic ways. They loop, pause, compare, explore, and only then, maybe, act.
By understanding how consumer behavior has evolved, you can build a content strategy that supports the entire funnel while meeting people where they are. Make your YouTube content useful, consistent, and visible across the formats your audience engages with most.
Ready to get started? Let’s build a strategy that works for how audiences actually behave today.
