Top 5 Video Marketing Metrics to Track Performance

Many brands worldwide now prioritise investing in creative video content, and its popularity shows no signs of waning.

According to HubSpot, marketers feel more positive about the ROI offered by video than ever before, as it continues to positively influence traffic, leads, sales, and audience insight.

To ensure this holds true for your own campaigns, it’s crucial to place emphasis on the appropriate performance metrics. This enables you to effectively monitor your return on investment and guarantees that you are allocating resources towards the most suitable content for your business.

We’ve outlined some of the key video marketing metrics you need to track to determine the success of your video marketing campaigns.

1. Video view completion rates

Video plays (or views) are one of the most common metrics used to track video marketing performance.

However, what counts as a ‘view’ can vary depending on the platform you are advertising on. This can lead to misinformed conclusions on the success of your campaign.

Here is a quick summary of what is counted as a view on different social media platforms:

YouTube: A view of more than 30 seconds or if a user intentionally watches a video
Facebook: A view of 3 seconds or more or 97% of the video’s total length
LinkedIn: A view of 2 seconds or more while the video is at least 50% on screen
Instagram: A view of 3 seconds or more (repeated loops not included)
Twitter: A view of 2 seconds or more while the video is at least 50% on screen

On most major platforms, a view can be counted within a few seconds. However, it’s unrealistic to assume that your message was effectively conveyed in such a short time or with only 50% of the video visible on the screen.

Other metrics such as ‘ThruPlay’ on Facebook are available to you and are counted when someone views at least 15 seconds of your video or 97% of your video (whichever comes first).

This can be a better metric to track if you have micro-content, but this isn’t ideal if you have video content that is 90 seconds or longer.

Rather than looking at the views, focus on the video view completion rates.

For example, you can track how many people have watched at least 75% of the video or more. On LinkedIn, you can even track how many people watched your video in a full-screen format, indicating high engagement with the content.

This offers a more effective way to monitor the number of viewers who actually watched your video, rather than solely concentrating on those who probably just scrolled past it.

2. Shares & comments

Having people interact with your video on social media is another key success metric, as it can tell you a lot about whether it’s the right content for your target audience.

Typical interactions (depending on the platform) can include:

Likes or reactions
Post saves
Comments
Shares

While all types of interactions are appreciated, certain ones have a greater impact in determining success.

For example, you may feature a video that gets lots of likes, but this doesn’t always mean that those taking this action will be fully engaged. They may like it absent-mindedly and continue on to the next post.

Instead, you should focus on the number of shares and comments your video receives.

This suggests that your content is meaningful and relevant. A comment signifies that your audience invests more time, while a share indicates their willingness to associate themselves with your brand and endorse your product or service.

Plus, platforms like Instagram tend to favour comments and shares over likes and are more likely to prioritise that content.

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3. Demographics

Next, you should always keep a close eye on who is engaging with your video.

It is good to measure view rates and post engagement, but you need to remember to identify who is actually racking up these metrics.

For example, if you are a company selling a service targeted at 45-55-year-old females, but the video is being delivered to 25-34-year-old males, then your chances of a successful campaign will decrease.

Not to mention that it will likely drive down other key metrics, as it’s not meaningful and relevant content to this group of people.

You can easily monitor your demographics through your reporting tools, such as Google Analytics or Facebook Ads Manager to identify these gaps and adjust your targeting accordingly.

4. Click-through rate

Next, we need to take the view rates, shares and comments and compare them to the click-through rate (or CTR) of the ad that your video is supporting.

Measuring a CTR is simple. It is the number of views divided by the number of people who clicked.

The effectiveness of a campaign can be gauged by whether the video effectively conveys the intended message. While your audience may enjoy and engage with your content through likes, comments, and shares, it’s important to remember that a video is typically utilised as part of a broader campaign strategy, with the ultimate goal of directing traffic to your landing page.

The ideal CTR varies depending on what platform you are advertising on and the industry you are in.

Facebook CTRs for video ads usually average around 2.2%, which is the highest out of other ad formats.

LinkedIn click-through rates, on the other hand, tend to be less. Sponsored videos have an average CTR of 0.44% as compared to text ads that average of around 0.02%. This can change depending on the country you are advertising to and the seniority of the target audience.

5. Conversion rates

Finally, we will tie the above metrics together with conversions, as this is the ultimate indicator of how your video marketing campaigns are performing.

Each of the video marketing metrics we explored plays a crucial role in a successful video campaign. However, the ultimate objective is to transform the incoming traffic into valuable paying customers or qualified leads.

Whether you’re featuring your video on a landing page or a social media platform, it’s important to determine the conversion rate of the viewers. This allows you to gauge how effectively your video engages and converts the traffic it receives.

Knowing this will indicate how well your content is relaying your message and the action that you want your audience to take.

You ideally want to make sure you are familiar with how to track your conversions before you start any campaign so that you have clear metrics from the beginning.