373K subscribers. A proven course business. A mid-year pivot that cost 27% of returning viewers. And a scoring framework that shows why — before a single pixel of redesign.
Public channel data from YouTube and Social Blade. Engagement rates calculated across a 10-video sample. Audience churn and retention figures sourced from Forte Labs' own 2025 Annual Review.
Each dimension is scored against a public data source — no estimates, no subjective ratings dressed up as data. The total is not a grade — it's a diagnosis. Strategy dimensions live inside engagements, labeled as judgment.
At 2.43% against a 2.77% mid-tier benchmark, Tiago's content underperforms on engagement relative to his niche peers. A comment/like ratio of 0.040 — just 11 avg comments against 278 avg likes — places the audience in the 6-point D5 band. High watch time, low conversation. The audience consumes but doesn't engage.
Tiago documented this himself in his 2025 Annual Review: a mid-year pivot to B2B AI content to support the Second Brain Enterprise launch caused returning viewers to drop 27% and Average Percentage Viewed to fall from 24% to 20%. His words: the shift led to "a lot of churn, confusion, and aversion."
The BASB brand has three distinct visual eras: the DIY solo era, the Marc Koenig agency era (2022–2023), and the current post-agency era. Each produced a different thumbnail aesthetic, color treatment, and production register. A subscriber who scrolled back six months sees a different visual identity than a new viewer.
D4 scores for four channels in the PKM and productivity niche, collected using the identical thumbnail-grid rubric — font, color, presence, layout, and grid coherence.
The audience that drives course conversions is the knowledge worker who wants to build their own system. The 27% returning viewer drop during the B2B pivot proves this empirically.
The weekly cadence shift is the right structural move. The risk now is format drift. Lock two formats maximum: personal PKM essay format & tool walkthrough format.
One locked thumbnail system — face, consistent warm-neutral background, single DM Mono data callout — unifies the grid and lifts D4 score measurably within 8 weeks.
Book a discovery call — I'll run your Brand Baseline Score before we discuss anything else.