Video or bust
TikTok and Youtube might be your first thoughts when it comes to video platforms, but for CBS News, Facebook too has become a video-first (if not video-only) platform. Of the 1,000 top-performing CBS News posts between April and June, a huge 88% were video-based. Native video, in particular, outperformed all other formats, accounting for 84% of total interactions and delivering an average of 27.4K engagements per post. And length does matter. The median successful video ran just 54 seconds, and clips under 30 seconds actually drew the highest engagement (averaging 30.8K interactions). Audiences aren’t looking for long-form, they’re snacking.
Heart over hard news headlines
While politics dominated the volume of posts, accounting for over 40% of the top stories, human and animal-interest content won the day in terms of engagement. Heartwarming rescues, emotional reunions, and awe-inspiring nature moments made up just under a third of the posts but drove nearly half of all engagement.
Even hard news like war, science, or health fared better when framed through an emotional or visual lens. A 30-second time-lapse of the aurora borealis, for instance, had far more traction than a minute-long explainer on solar activity.
Emotion drives action, and positivity leads
Perhaps the most overlooked but powerful insight from the data is this: positive emotion wins. Facebook users responded with far more Love, Haha, and Wow reactions than Sad or Angry to the top posts. Across the dataset, posts skewed nearly 2-to-1 toward positive reactions, especially in themes like science (88% positive), human-interest (74%), and even war, when framed through heroism or resilience (84%).
While outrage has traditionally been seen as a driver of engagement on social platforms, CBS News’ results suggest that audiences may be shifting, at least on Facebook. Stories that offer hope, wonder, or relief, not outrage, are consistently earning more shares, more comments, and more staying power in the feed.
Key takeaways for publishers
- Keep it short: Aim for under 60 seconds, ideally under 30, for max engagement.
- Lead with feeling: Heartwarming and visually stunning moments outperform even the biggest political headlines
- Optimize for positivity: Stories that inspire or uplift drive deeper engagement than those that provoke anger.
Facebook’s audience in 2025 is still hungry for news, but more than ever, they want it fast, visual, and with a dose of humanity.
For more on how publishers drove success, head over to our report.
