IAB Creator Growth Summit
How did @RobdoingRob go from Nano to Macro in 2 months?
The story
How can a creator go from being a Nano in August, to a Macro creator by October? That’s the question we dug into with @RobdoingRob, a content creator who saw massive growth in 2025.
Starting out as the Terracedgarden, Rob became “Rob gardens and grows” as he became more prolific with his content and included his own, whimsical and chaotic style.
He had spent 2 and half years posting content before he saw any real growth, but it was his need to branch out beyond gardening in the autumn of 2025 that led him to amass over a million followers across his channels.
The methodology
We used our proprietary Nutcake Blueprint model to analyse 1,063 of Rob’s videos, all from Instagram where the content sample was the largest, and we stuck to one platform to remove any platform-specific quirks that could dilute insights.
As Rob is authenticated on Nutcake we can extract full performance data from the Meta API. That means all views, engagements and metrics such as skip rate, watch time and completion rates were also included for analysis.
We passed every one of Rob’s video files through our Nutcake AI system to enrich the data via 105 different measures. Examples of some of those enriched video metrics:
- Full transcription
- Words per minute
- Edits / cuts per minute
- Tone (funny, upbeat, sarcastic)
- Key object recognition (timestamped)
- Brand and logo mentions (visual + audio, timestamped)
- Hook, stakes, body
- Editing techniques (recognises 10 key methods)
- Narrative of the ending
These data points give our model a deep understanding of what each video was about, as well as what is seen, when, and in what context. We use organic views as our key measure of success, with engagement and watch time to understand how people spent their time with each video. As Rob was growing throughout the data, each video was given its own baseline performance based on its closest 30 posts at any given point in time.
This data goes through a number of different methods including regression analysis to isolate the effect of key variables on success. We use Claude Fable to interrogate the results and go deeper as we discover more insights.
Key findings
The model produced a formula for predicting Rob’s reach, which is as simple as it is fascinating.
To break it down in simple terms, it says reach is proportional to a mix of completion rate % and total video watch time. Completion rate, while harder to achieve, was an exponent, so it has an exponential effect on reach. Watch time was the biggest overall driver of reach for Rob, but it doesn’t compound as it increases.
As simple as this finding is, what we then got into was what elements were key at driving completion and watch time in Rob’s content.
It’s important to note: this formula only works above 45 seconds in duration. Below this, the algorithm doesn’t weight completion in the same way at all.
Rob’s content over 2025 saw 5 key elements change, and all applied together at once, drove exponential growth in reach.
His Fisheye 360 camera view
Originally bought to give a perspective of his flowers, Rob purchased a head strap after Amazon served him the ad for it. What he found was a new way to tell stories on gardening while being hands free to do his work. His audience loved the comedy element of how it made him look, and in the world of gardening was quite unique (he of course wasn’t the only creator who uses 360 cameras).
Effect on watch time: +45%
The stakes. AKA his opening hooks.
Rob is generally a master of his hooks. He routinely beats hook retention (people watching for more than 3 seconds) at 60% and above, which is significant. But the data showed Rob also raises his stakes, and makes people want to watch the whole video (increasing completion rates). Stakes raising is simply adding a tension into his storylines that gives people a reason to care, such as “OMG Ant is going to kill me”, or putting deadlines and restrictions into his narrative.
Hooks with stakes first saw higher hook retention and completion rates.
Effect on watch time: +16%
Increasing video duration by 5.7 times.
As Rob grew his views he also increased his video duration. This was a result of other elements, such as the fisheye camera and moving away from pure gardening content to broader topics. But it had one very interesting effect that is related to the original formula we discovered: if a video is short (generally under 45 seconds, although it’s more nuanced) Rob is restricting the total watch time he can achieve on a video. As a creator who is able to retain viewers for a longer period, he’s handsomely rewarded for increasing his video duration to over 1 minute, with higher organic reach.
Effect on watch time: 4x
Featuring Ant.
As Rob started to feature more of his home life, he naturally included his partner, Ant. The interplay between the two of them gave Rob a boost in watch time, as viewers became more interested in Rob as a character vs. just his gardening content.
Ant provided the biggest boost of any person featured in his content, although people generally provided a boost across the board including his mum (+20%), and even his dog (+17%).
Effect on watch time: +35%
His editing craft improvements.
Many of the enriched elements we analyse are based on editing techniques and video craft. We identified 4 elements that compound to give a boost to watch time:
- Snap starts: a joint measure of how much Rob speaks, and how quickly at the start of a video he starts talking. This style became much more popular as he grew.
- Spoken hooks: this is compared to hooks that are used in on-screen titles. Rob increased his words per minute by 18% and relied on titles half as much as 2025 developed.
- Resolution: this is a style of ending videos. Did the storyline get fully resolved before the end, was it left open, and / or did the video end abruptly? Abrupt endings improve completion rates as the viewer doesn’t have time to swipe before the video ends.
- Chaotic style: this style was key to Rob moving towards personality-based content and high-energy videos, and worked perfectly in tandem with the other editing techniques to improve watch time.
Effect on watch time: +31%
What can brands learn from this?
This is an important lesson in how to approach growing your reach on social platforms, whether you’re a creator or a brand. Both have to follow the same rules to gain traction on people’s feeds. Everyone is competing for space on those feeds.
#1 Make videos people want to watch 👀
If you make videos people want to watch, every other metric will fall into place. Rob learnt how to maximise his audience’s attention by honing in on watch time. We see in every dataset that likes, comments, shares and saves don’t drive reach, they purely reflect it.
#2 Every video can teach you something.
Rob spent 2.5 years as a Nano creator posting 10 times a week before he grew. Don’t be afraid to post videos and allow them to fail. Learn what works and improve over the long term. The learning never stops happening even as you grow.
#3 Tailor briefs for each creator.
No two playbooks are the same. What we discovered works for Rob is personal to his content. There’s 2 things to consider here. Firstly, every creator and brand has their own specific playbook of what works. Brands just need to learn theirs. Nutcake intelligence gives you your playbook and also the playbook of your competitors, and favourite creators (or ambassadors). Second, consider what works for each creator when you brief them, don’t give creators your rules and think it’s gospel. It literally never works.
#4 Effects compound. Develop your own brand playbook using data.
The biggest driver of growth for Rob was doing all 5 of the things he discovered work for him, in each video. Removing one element drops reach, and all 5 compound on each other to give outlier effects. That’s a powerful thing to have written down when you create content, to judge how well optimised your videos are. Nutcake intelligence comes with pre testing, so you can get instant feedback on videos before you post them.
‘Nutcake helps us optimise our creator hooks, which makes a huge difference to results when our clients are investing heavily in the space’
Jo Lyall
Executive Partner · MSQ