In the past years, more and more advertisers have shifted ads from static to video ads for various reasons. After TikTok's success and massive adoption by more than 2 billion users worldwide, other social media platforms have followed the trend and introduced short-form video formats. This has brought even more focus to video advertising and the best practices to make these as performing as possible.
Any DTC brand advertising through videos must understand their performance and ensure the proper video metrics are assessed. As measuring the success of video ads can stretch through different KPIs, in this blog post, we go through the latest video metrics added to the Admetrics Data Studio and how to make the most of this data.
Video metrics any advertising brand must track
The shift in social media users' behavior has influenced how consumers' interact with brands and the type of content formats they prefer. As the video trend is here to stay, performance marketers considering video ads should include these metrics in their marketing reporting as they provide valuable insights into the effectiveness of video campaigns.
CPV (Cost of a 2-second video view)
This video metric is calculated by dividing the spend on a video campaign by the number of visits it receives. It helps marketers understand the cost of a 2-second video view. Also, brands can optimize their campaigns for maximum engagement and conversion. This helps measure the ROI and acts as an indicator of possible wrong tactics, implying the need for changing audiences or narrowing/broadening these.
Youtube was the first social media platform to introduce video ads in 2007 as a means for advertisers to reach new audiences. If traditionally, the CPV metrics were used to measure video ads for brand awareness or user acquisition for mobile-first products such as apps, those days are gone, as video advertising is now used for any campaign objective and is just another format in a company’s performance marketing plan.
Thumbstop rate(aka Hook rate)
The hook rate can be an extremely useful video metric showing the effectiveness of videos engaging audiences as they scroll through their feeds. Optimizing for grabbing attention in the first 2 seconds can make the difference between a successful campaign and one that falls flat.
The thumbstop rate might indicate the creative's potential to convert and help gather valuable feedback before scaling unprofitable video ads. This will show the initial impact of video ads, especially on platforms that allow users to skip them.
VTR (View-through rate)
This video metric measures the number of plays of a video that reach 100% of its length. It helps marketers understand how many viewers are watching their videos in their entirety. The video metric can also show how many viewers have reached the final call to action(CTA) in the video, if any, and thus indicates how successful campaigns are at keeping viewers engaged. This helps advertising brands adapt their messages accordingly and know at what point of teh video ads the CTA’s should be inserted.
Video 1st/2nd/3rd quartile rate
This video metric measures the percentage of plays of a video that reach 25%/50%/75% of its length. It gives marketers an idea of how engaged viewers are with their videos at any given time and how much of it they watch.
Engagement rate
This metric gives performance marketers valuable insights into viewer engagement with their videos and helps them optimize their campaigns for maximum engagement. It's crucial to have a high engagement as algorithms of most social media platforms favor appealing videos, and the more viewers spend watching an advertiser's content, the better for both the platform and brand. After analyzing the virality of hundreds of thousands of TikTok videos, one determining success factor found was engagement.
Video 1st/2nd/3rd quartile views
Similar to the quartile rate, this metric measures the number of plays of a video that reaches 25%/50%/75% of its length. It provides marketers with a more detailed view of viewer engagement with their videos, helping them assess the ad placement quality and creativity.
Start tracking video metrics with Admetrics
These video metrics add to the already extensive Admetrics dashboard, and complement previously available video metrics, the thumbstop rate, and video views count. Equipped with these comprehensive metrics, DTC brands can make more informed decisions about their video marketing strategies and adjust them as needed to improve the effectiveness of their campaigns.
Download Admetrics Data Studio and discover unique features in the DTC landscape, such as a proprietary Bayesian statistics engine that allows brands to test a multitude of variants at once and decide on winning campaigns, audiences, creatives, and much more. Also, Admetrics offers GDPR and CCPA-compliant proprietary tracking of customer journeys across channels and devices, attributing sales to the right channels, even after the iOS14+ update. Other benefits include AI-based predictive audiences, which allow DTC brands to proactively engage high-value customers and expand the reach of campaigns to other relevant audiences based on first-party data.
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