The 4 Most Important Metrics You Need To Measure Video
Most people look at View Count to see if their video is a success.
I'm not one of those people.
If all you care about is getting 1 million people to click “play”, watch for 3 seconds, and then move on...then you’re probably a movie studio with a new feature trailer and your goal is to look popular enough for people to buy a ticket. If you’re anybody else, you need to redefine what success looks like. 1 million 3 second views is pretty much worthless.
Because I have a deep, abiding love for telling people what to do, I’ve gone in depth into what the top 4 video metrics are and how to use them. Get ready for a whirlwind of percentages and real talk.
If you actually want people to absorb your content and/or engage with it, then you need to look at all four of the below metrics.
4 Key Metrics:
1. Average Watch Time (00:00 or %)
Definition: How much of the video most people actually watch / at what point of the video they STOP watching
I strongly believe this is the most important metric. If you look at only one number, look at this one. This tells you whether or not your video actually resonates with viewers. A high watch time like 80% means that a person is watching 80% of your video. They’re sticking with you until almost the end. These are highly engaged viewers, who are primed and ready to binge more of your content and/or click on your CTAs.
This number also tells you at exactly what point people are getting bored. Watch time hovering at 50%? Take a look at what happens at the halfway mark. Maybe the video goes off topic, or all the important stuff is front-loaded into the beginning and the last half is fluff.
Note that the shorter your video, the higher this average should be. Industry standard is around 3 minutes. If all your videos are longer and have low average watch times, considering chopping those up into short episodes.
Use this metric to adjust editing to make a video more appealing, retire videos that aren’t resonating, or promote the ones that are.
Some common things you ‘ll see...
High Average Watch Time: Yay, people are watching most of your video! Have a cookie.
High Average Watch Time but Low Completion Rate: You probably have end titles (like a company logo) and as soon as they come on screen people leave because that signals the end of the video and also logos are boring. If you want people to stay all the way until the end, like if you have an end screen with clickable links (YouTube), then get rid of the end credits/logo stuff or incorporate them into the end screen design.
Low Average Watch Time: Take careful note of exactly where most people drop off. Some platforms will even give you an exact time code for average watch time. What is happening in the video at that point? For my own videos, I’ve found that the ones with the lowest average watch time had extremely long intros. People have incredibly short attention spans, so dispense with all the intros. Nobody cares. For non fiction content, explain what the video’s value to the viewer is and then jump immediately into the meat of it. For more narrative content, make sure the beginning is compelling. You will see your watch times increase.
2. Completion Rate (%)
Definition: How many people who clicked “play” actually watched to the end
You may think this is the same as average watch time but it’s not! With average watch time, you can pinpoint the exact part of the video where people get bored. Completion Rate tells us how much the video resonated with the audience enough to watch the entire thing. Ideally, you want most people to watch 100% of the video, right?
Please note that this number does not take into account people who watched most of the video but bounced just before the end. Completion Rate is a binary statistic: either a viewer watched 100% of the video or not.
Use this metric to adjust the length of your video and trim unnecessary end credits/logos.
Some common things you’ll see…
High Completion Rate: Most people who click on your video are watching until the end. Congrats.
Low Completion Rate: Your video is probably too long or too boring.
Low Completion Rate, High Average Watch Time: You probably have something at the end of the video like credits or a lengthy logo. The bulk of the value is already done, and most people don’t care about credits.
3. View Count (#)
Definition: How many people watched the video for a specific amount of time, often only 3 seconds.
Most importantly, View Count tells us whether the video appeared interesting enough to viewers for them to click. That could be an appealing thumbnail, interesting subject matter, great title, or popular keywords.
This is the least important mostly because it provides the least information. Depending on the platform, a view count can mean somebody watched 3 seconds of your video and then clicked away. Literally 3 seconds. That’s how much it takes for Facebook to count something as a view. (Of course, they also give you view counts of people who’ve watched up to 30 sec, and people who have watched 100%. Those are all way more useful)
This is pretty much the same across platforms, with varying numbers of seconds to define what a “view” is. You’ll definitely need to check what each platform counts as a view.
You cannot measure success using this metric alone. Okay, your video got 10,000 views. But your average watch time is 5% of the video, so….honey, somebody is either buying views or the beginning of your video is just real bad.
Use this metric to measure reach. Adjust CTAs leading to the video, optimize keywords/titles/thumbnails.
Some common things you ‘ll see...
High View Count but Low Watch Time / Completion Rate: There’s a disconnect between the video and the viewer’s expectations. Maybe your thumbnail is colorful and professional looking but the video quality is grainy and bad. Or maybe the title is “Ranking The Best Star Wars Movies” but the entire thing is just a rant about The Last Jedi. Or, in the case of companies, maybe the title and thumbnail is interesting but the content is a sales pitch. Long story short, don’t bait and switch your audience.
Low View Count but High Watch Time / Completion Rate: The content is definitely resonating with people who actually click “play”, but most people aren’t clicking. Your thumbnail, title, and copy probably suck. This is the easiest, lowest effort thing to fix.
4. Total Watch Time
Definition: How many minutes in total that have been spent by everybody watching your video.
YouTube adjusts search ranking based on this. I repeat: YouTube Does Not Care About A High View Count.
Remember that 1mil views your video got? And how excited you were about it? Well, maybe that’s 1mil views that are 3 seconds long, so the video is actually not popular. According to YouTube’s algorithm, a video with a smaller view count but higher average watch time is actually performing better.
I even did the math to show how this works:
You: 1,000,000 views @ about 3 seconds per view = ~833 hours Total Watch Time
Competitor: 100,000 views @ about 120 seconds per view = ~3,333 hours Total Watch Time
Use this metric to get an overall reading on your video’s strategy. Measure how well your social amplification, SEO/thumbnail/etc., and the content itself is working together.
Some common things you’ll see...
Low Total Watch Time, High View Count: Ya bought views and the bots are only watching 3 seconds. Stop doing that. YouTube hates it, but also you get no useful information about your content’s performance (#fakenews).
Low Total Watch Time, High Average Watch Time: The video resonates with your audience but the reach is too small. Try beefing up how often and on how many platforms the video gets posted. Maybe touch up the keywords, thumbnail, and title so it gets picked up more through search.
High Total Watch Time, Low Average Watch Time: This isn’t that big of a problem, but you probably have a high view count and a huge audience. So people are interested in you or your company and are clicking and dedicating some time to watch, but the video is either too long or too boring for them to finish.
High Total Watch Time, High Average Watch Time: I obviously have nothing left to teach you, so go, young padawan. Go and change the world with your clearly amazing content.
