YouTube channel “Webdriver Torso” is a test instrument created by Google to examine how its users look at things. A deeper sense is assumed to lie behind seemingly vacuous material, and click rates rose accordingly.

Charlie Gschwend: “More than 80,000 videos featuring red and blue rectangles were uploaded to a YouTube account. It kicked off an online mystery. It wasn’t some clever campaign. Google was just testing the quality of uploaded video. But it worked like a campaign. We got a glimpse behind the curtain. And what we saw was intriguing and impressive.”