I Used Sora for This Reel… and the 123% Retention Honestly Surprised Me
Published on December 30, 2025
Published on Wealthy Affiliate — a platform for building real online businesses with modern training and AI.
Yesterday I promised that I would come back with real data after testing a Reel built with AI-generated footage using Sora.
I wasn’t testing Sora itself.
We already know it’s powerful.
What I really wanted to test was something else:
"Does storytelling still matter when the footage is AI-generated?"
Spoiler: yes. Very much. (Thank God!)
YouTube (Suomii Fabrics — small, recently restarted channel)
- 361 views in the first 24 hours
- Average view duration: 123%
- 5 likes
Ok these are not viral numbers but they still give us a clear direction for our next content!
Let’s stop for a second on that 123%, because this is the key number.
A retention over 100% means people didn’t just watch the Reel.
They watched it again.
They replayed it.
On a small channel.
With no special push.
That’s not just “nice footage.”
That’s storytelling doing its job.
Another small but important signal: this is the first video on this channel to ever reach 5 likes. No other video had done that before.
This single Reel:
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- moved reach from 11% to 17% in one day (my goal is reaching 5000 reach)
- increased reach from 500 to 877
- generated 353 views
- received 11 likes
Since the page restart, no other post has reached this level of interaction.
The average post reach is around 50-100, so this Reel clearly performed far above the norm.
Facebook is now showing it to more people — a clear sign that engagement and retention were strong.
- 600 views in about a day and a half
- 16 likes
These are just first-day numbers.
Lately, both Facebook and Instagram seem to keep pushing Reels that perform well, even after the first day. So I guess we will see these numbers growing!
What These Numbers Are Really Telling Us
This experiment confirmed that what really drives:
- replays
- retention
- emotional reaction
- likes
is storytelling.
Product-focused posts on these same profiles don’t generate this kind of response.
Narrative content does.
And that’s what builds authority around a brand, not just visibility.
Conclusion
All these channels have been restarted just 20 days ago, so these numbers are congruent with a testing phase from all algorhytms by the different platforms.
What we can read here among the data is a clear direction to take to produce more similar content!
AI can give you beautiful images or footage.
But it won’t tell the story for you.
Storytelling is the real skill, and that’s exactly why I’m so happy to announce Creative Writing for Entrepreneurs – Season 2 🎉
This new season will focus on storytelling strategies for our brands:
how to build narratives, create emotional connection, and use words and visuals in a way that makes people stay, rewatch, and engage.
Tools evolve.
Algorithms change.
But a good story still does the heavy lifting :)))
If you want to read the process for creating this reel, check my previous post here
Big New Year Bacini
Suomii
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