As digital platforms have developed, the different ways of measuring video metrics has become much more detailed compared to other content formats. Despite this, when marketers are asked what is their biggest challenge with videos, they will answer "measuring the results".
Videolle's head of media and data, Tuomo Sinkkonen, shares his suggestions for measuring video success, based on his 10+ years of experience in the field.
Your goal sets your metricsThe most important factor that decides your important metrics is the goal of your video. Already when planning a video you should have clarity of what the end goal for the video is and how you'll be measuring it. Too often people will fall back on simply looking at impression counts, even though impressions will rarely tell anything else besides how much money was spent on getting those impressions.
Once the goal has been set you will have an easier time figuring out useful metrics to follow. Next I'll cover some of the most common goals and metrics used for measuring them.
1. Brand awareness
When the goal is to improve brand awareness, it is obviously imperative that the video reaches as many members of the target audience as possible. How many target audience members saw the video, and how far into the video did they watch? Engagement metrics can also give you a good idea of how your video resonates in the target audience.
Imporant metrics to follow:
- Impressions, views and reach
- Engagements
- Ad recall
2. Consideration
Videos are also commonly used for getting people to consider the brand's products and services. Typically a good indication of consideration is the time spent watching the video. Landing page views or downloads through the video are also good indicators of increased consideration.
Important metrics to follow:
- Time spent with the content
- Website traffic through the video
- Increase in trials (for services)
3. Conversions
Videos meant to increase the amount of leads, sales and website traffic are measured by the amount of desired actions taken. How many who viewed the video moved onto downloading something, subscribed to the newsletter or the YouTube-channel?
Important metrics to follow:
- Purchases, app downloads and leads that came through the ad
- Website traffic and time spent on the website
4. Customer experience
Videos that are meant to improve cusomer experience are, obviously, measured by how useful and helpful they actually are to the customers. If despite producing the video to answer commonly asked questions the customers still keep asking those questions via customer support, there is something wrong with your video. Customer experience takes longer to show changes, so you'll be following the changes for a good while after releasing the video.
Important metrics to follow:
- Time spent watching the video (do they finish watching it?)
- Additional purchases
- Customer support tickets (have they gone up or down?)
Analysing and improving the creative aspects of a video with data
Videos that generate amazing results on the first try are rare, and the best ones are usually like diamonds in the rough - they need continued work and improvement. To get started with this process, I would suggest you gather the following metrics from all your video campaigns: thumbstopping, retention and conversion rates.
1. THUMBSTOPPING = HOW MANY WATCHED AT LEAST 3 SECONDS
Especially video campaigns run on social media platforms need to catch the viewer's eye from the very first frame. It's very common that after the first 3 seconds only around 10% are still watching. If this is your situation, consider the following points:
- Did the videos beginning offer a good reason to keep watching?
- Does your video work even without audio, was it visually distinct enough?
- Can you use any platform specific functionality to stop the viewers' thumbs, such as voting or reaction functions?
2. RETENTION = HOW MANY OF THE PEOPLE WHO WATCHED AT LEAST 3 SECONDS WATCHED TO THE END
If the video did manage to catch the viewer's attention, next comes the challenge of keeping the watching to the end. If despite a strong start your viewer's drop off before even the middlepoint, consider these:
- Is your video too long or slowly paced?
- Was the visual storytelling engaging enough, was the viewer kept engaged enough with new visuals?
3. ACTIVATION = HOW MANY OF THE VIEWERS DID THE DESIRED ACTION AFTER WATCHING THE VIDEO
If you wanted to activate users to make a purchase, subscribe or anything else, but this goal wasn't met, consider the following:
- Were your call-to-actions included too late in the video, where most viewers didn't even watch? Were they clear enough?
- Were your call-to-actions tempting, or a bit passive?
By keeping an eye on these three metrics, you will come across improvements for your video's structure and storytelling. You will need a good amount of patience however, because these improvements take time and several iterations, but they will pay off in their due time.
