Businesses today aren’t just brands. They’re media companies.

Reaching audiences now requires marketers to meet customers where they’re at. In many cases, that’s Facebook, LinkedIn, and other social media platforms. 

One of the best ways to stick out on these platforms is through video content marketing. In fact, marketers who use video grow revenue 49% faster than those who don’t implement video into their marketing mix.

In this article, we’ve broken down the most important video marketing metrics into different categories depending on your marketing goals:

• Brand awareness   
• Engagement
• Demand Generation Via Live video 
• Conversions
  

But before we get into the metrics, let’s explain the importance of tracking video marketing metrics.

Why You Should Be Tracking Video Marketing Metrics

Like any content, you need to measure the effectiveness of each video you publish. By identifying the right metrics to track, you can establish benchmarks and determine what’s working and what’s not. Then you can iterate on your content to get better results.

As with any content marketing effort, it’s important to start with goals and key performance indicators (KPIs) you can measure to determine whether or not you’re reaching your goals. Your video marketing metrics are those KPIs.

Now without further ado, let’s take a look at awareness stage video marketing metrics.

Awareness Metrics

Awareness metrics align with the top-of-funnel goals. For many marketers, that means getting a target audience interested in their brand. 

The video marketing metrics below translate to the awareness stage in a content marketing funnel. 

Play Rate

If you have videos embedded on your site, you likely want to track how many site visitors watch. 

Play rate measures how many times a user clicks the play button on a given video.

Play rate is calculated by taking the number of people who play a video divided by the number of people who visit a page containing the video.

If you're running video campaigns on Facebook, you can view play rate under "Clicks to Play" in your video insights.

A Databox survey found most video marketers play rate averages between 41-60%. 

Impressions

Impressions show the number of times your video ad appears (regardless of whether someone clicks or not). This metric is available on Facebook and many other video ad networks to help you gauge the potential reach of a specific ad. 

If your ad's not generating as many impressions as you expect, there may be an issue with the ad such as:

• Irrelevant topic to the audience targeted.
• Your ad target settings are too narrow.
• Your budget is too low to generate impressions.

Viewer Demographics

You may be generating views. But are you reaching the right audience?

Viewer demographics lets brands or any other content creators see the people who engage with their content. You can view the primary location, age, and gender of your viewers on Facebook.

Within the Audience menu on YouTube Studio, you can review your audience’s demographics including:

• Top countries 
• Gender 
• Age

Then consider running ad campaigns targeting the audience demographics you gather to increase your videos’ reach further.  

Engagement Metrics

With engagement metrics, you can see what video content resonates with your audience.

Watch Time

Facebook calls it minutes watched. YouTube refers to this video marketing metric as watch time.

Watch time is the estimated total minutes spent viewing your videos.

YouTube accounts for watch time, not views when ranking videos in their search results. If climbing up the search rankings on YouTube is a goal, you may need to edit and re-post videos with low watch times. 

Watch time is typically why most top-ranking YouTube videos are 10+ minutes.

Average View Duration

The average view duration looks at how long your viewers watch your video on average. Take the total watch time of your video divided by the total number of video plays (including replays) to get the average view duration. 

If you have a 15-minute long video and viewers only watch 1 minute, you have an issue with the content. Perhaps the first minute doesn't grab their attention or the topic is irrelevant to them. 

The video may also be too long for your audience. 

Watchers are more likely to tune into shorter videos until the end. A study by Vidyard found videos that are four minutes or longer have a significantly higher drop-off. More in-depth videos between two and four minutes have the highest playthrough rates.

All that said, since average view duration is an important YouTube ranking factor, lengthier videos can still grab a viewer’s attention and have a longer average view duration. 

Shares

A big part of increasing engagement is spreading a video’s reach. Each time someone clicks share on a video, it means a viewer enjoyed your video so much they want others to watch it too. 

Keep in mind if you’re looking to trend on social media: People are twice as likely to share video content with their friends than any other type of content. 

Comments

Comments can provide qualitative feedback on your video. Additionally, you can get a deeper understanding of how someone viewing your video feels about the content than you’d find with likes.

If you’re looking to rank in organic searches on YouTube, a Backlinko study found a direct correlation between a video’s total comments and rankings.

Here are a few ways to encourage comments:

• Ask your viewers a question they can answer in the comments.
• Reply back to existing comments to encourage further discussion.
• Give viewers an extra nudge by hosting giveaways for anyone who comments on your videos. 
• Include a CTA at the end of the video encouraging viewers to comment with their questions.
  

In some cases, you may be able to engage viewers in a conversation.

Likes 

On most social platforms, viewers have the option to like videos. 

Likes  boost your video's organic reach on social platforms. In other words, the more likes your video content has, the more likely it will appear on the main feed for social users that follow your brand. 

Negative Feedback

Dislike buttons. Angry reactions on Facebook. Downvotes on Reddit. 

Brands also need to be actively tracking negative feedback. Especially if your content goes viral for all the wrong reasons and you need to make an immediate course correction.

For example, Mint Mobile LLC had to pull the below campaign in wake of COVID-19. The offbeat video ad contained people eating queso with their fingers at a party. 

The ad ran off and on for the year prior to the pandemic. Mint Mobile also pulled the ad’s companion website, fingerdipping.com.

“We understand the sensitivity in the marketplace,” said Aron North, chief marketing officer of Mint Mobile to the Wall Street Journal.

Live Video Metrics

If you’re broadcasting video content live, such as a webinar or live stream, the video marketing metrics that matter are slightly different. Here’s what you need to be tracking:

Peak Viewers

Peak live viewers show you when you had the highest amount of viewers watching your video live. The longer your audience sticks around, the more satisfied they are with the content. 

On YouTube livestreams, this video marketing metric is the peak concurrent viewers.

If you’re hosting an all-afternoon summit, and 80% of your viewers stop watching after 30 minutes, something’s clearly up.  

You should adjust your content by seeing where the drop-off point occurs. 

Opportunities Created 

You’ve hosted a virtual event using live or pre-recorded content. Now marketing and sales need to come together—and see who to follow up with. 

Opportunities created are new leads in your sales pipeline as a result of the event. 

87% of marketers identify the opportunities generated by virtual events as a success factor.

Since video plays such a huge role in the success of webinars and virtual events, consider including opportunities created from these events in your video marketing metrics. 

Live vs. On-Demand Viewership

You invite a lead to watch your webinar live. They’re busy at the time, but made it a priority to watch later. Get a better understanding if you need to prioritize on-demand content by reviewing the number of viewers who playback later instead of viewing live. 

If a lot of people watch your video on-demand, it may also indicate the time you chose to host your virtual event doesn’t work for your target audience.

Conversion Metrics

At the bottom of your funnel, your customers are ready to take action. If you’re looking to add video into the mix to give them that extra push, here are a few video marketing metrics to track. 

Click-through Rate (CTR)

The click-through rate in videos measures how many viewers click on the CTA at the end of a video or follow through on the next step mentioned in the content.

For example, the video by Citi below contains a CTA to visit citigold.citi.com.

Keep in mind the average CTR for video ads is .27% according to a video benchmark report by Extreme Reach. 

Here are a few different tests you can run on videos to improve theirCTRs:

• Try moving the CTA earlier in your video.
• Use different messaging for the CTA.
• Update the design of the video frame where the CTA appears.
  

If you have an underperforming CTR, test the CTA placement or a new CTA message in your video.

Conversion Rate

Someone reaches a landing page or product page containing a video. Your video’s conversion rate measures how many viewers then complete an intended action. Depending on your conversion goal, that action can be anything from filling out a demo form to making a purchase.

To calculate a video’s conversion rate, take the number of viewers that completed your desired action and divided by the total number of viewers. 

You’ll want to see how much a page’s conversion rate increases or decreases after adding a video on important pages on your site including product pages and landing pages. 

The average conversion rate across Google Ads is 4.40% and on Facebook Ads it’s 9.21% regardless of whether the landing page contains a video. 

That said, 71% of marketers in a Vidyard study stated their video content's conversion performance was either somewhat or much better compared to other types of marketing content. 

Video Marketing Metrics: Wrapping It Up

As you identify which video marketing metrics to use as KPIs in campaigns, you’ll need benchmarks in place to improve all your content.

Knotch’s content wide analytics show how well a piece of content performs compared to the rest of your assets based on pivotal metrics including click-through rates. Plus, you can view the total number of engagements your content generates across Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest.

Learn more about how Knotch can help you. Request a demo today.