Video Analytics: The key metrics you should be measuring

When it comes to video creation there are only two parts attached to it.

The creation process and the measuring process.

It’s estimated that by 2022, 82 percent of the global internet traffic will come from video streaming and downloads.

If you have already started churning out video content for your brand, then you are already ahead of a lot of people.

But, I hate to break the bad news to you.

35% of businesses are using intermediate or advanced analytics to measure the performance of videos.

If you are not measuring the success of your videos there’s no point in getting your content out there. By simply posting content, we are only adding weight to the Internet indexes.

Direct your efforts towards creating the right content for the right audience at the right time and strategize better by analyzing your data.

Setting goals and determining ROI

Video metrics is not a pedagogy that can be taught with a well-structured syllabus. The success metrics vary broadly depending on your goals, your target audiences, type of ROI expectations (organic and paid efforts), and more. Also, a lot of analysis and personal experimentation goes into tapping the best out of the content you create.

Whether you are measuring ROI organically or through paid campaigns, certain metrics remain common to both and is fundamental to understanding video analytics.

This guide will help you find out if the video you create has an upward trajectory or not and how to set yourself up for success by weighing the right metrics.

Let’s get started.

Five key metrics to measure for every video you create

1. views

Views can be defined as a bare minimum amount of time an audience pauses to watch your video. This time varies across channels and is defined by the particular channel.

Here’s a quick overview of what is considered as a view on different social channels:

Source: Buffer

While channels like Facebook and Instagram consider a minimum of 3 seconds as one view and Youtube considers a minimum of 30 seconds as one view, it becomes quite clear to us that your videos should have a great hook and hold the audience for a few seconds.

Whether they bounce off later or not depends on your core content. But, to boost your views(aim for this first) create videos that make the audience curious.

• Optimize your captions and descriptions. Use relevant hashtags to improve the reach and thereby your views
• Keep the first few seconds of your videos intriguing. To catch the attention of your audience, try an alarming statistic, promise to teach something valuable, or ask a question
• Use powerful visuals and high-quality video content
• If you want to particularly boost views on Youtube, then, have a catchy thumbnail image and use keyword-rich titles and descriptions

2.Play rate

To understand the play rate metric, let’s assume two scenarios:

One would be a video embedded on your website

To calculate the play rate of the videos embedded on your website, you need data on the number of visits to your page and the number of people who actually play your video. The proportion of visits to video play should be reasonably adequate.

Play Rate = No. of video plays / No. of visits to the page

What does a low play rate imply?

It means there are visits to your page, but not many people are playing the video and here’s why:

• Your video is not enticing enough — no hook and it does not create the curiosity to click
• The placement of the video embed is wrong. It is either buried down in the page where people hardly reach or is conflicting with an adjacent exciting CTA
• Video is not relevant to the topic. The intention of your page and the video do not complement each other

Another on social media channels, say, Youtube

Play rate on Youtube simply means the percentage of the number of video plays divided by impressions. Impressions are the number of times your video has appeared on the feed, upon search, or in recommended and video play is when the audience clicks the video to watch.

Source: Google support

How to improve the play rate percentage?

• Optimize your titles and descriptions
• Create attractive thumbnails

3. Engagement

Get Animaker’s stories in your inbox

Join Medium for free to get updates from this writer.

Remember me for faster sign in

Views and impressions can be vanity metrics as it has a mix of untargeted audiences accidentally viewing your video.

But, engagement is not like that.

Audiences who are genuinely interested in your video engage with it. Engagement is one of the crucial metrics that you must measure as it gives you insights into at what point people drop-off.

What does engagement metrics include?

• Video length (measuring the average length)
• Likes, double-taps, and reactions on the video
• Dropping comments on the video
• Sharing the video (will be discussed in detail)

Engagement purely depends on how creative, informative, and interactive your video is. The core content at the beginning and throughout defines the retention of the audience.

If you are not sure about crafting engagement-worthy videos that are well-scripted, timed right, and with good aesthetics — you can leverage pre-built templates. But, the only thing you need to do is research well, compare and identify the best tools that can help you edit templates and post videos that can skyrocket engagement.

Choose tools that let you create a variety of videos.

What to do if there is a drop in engagement rate?

First, calculate the engagement rate by dividing the total engagement by reach

and * 100.

Now, if this percentage is low, then identify where the drop-offs and bounces are high on your video. Replace the segments with another version and track the results of the A/B test.

There might be several reasons for the low engagement rate that you have identified. But, while A/B testing, keep all variables constant and change only one to measure right. Use the insights to tweak your strategy and improve your engagement rate.

Other ideas could be — re-work the script, trim the length of the video, change the placement of your CTA, rethink video intros and outros, and push the interesting portion of your video sooner.

4. Click-through rates

CTR is the most expensive metric because it is directly connected with your ROI goals. Any content creator who gets a video out to the world has a goal of getting the audience to do the desired action which could be driving them to their landing page or to like, comment, share, or subscribe to their channel in case of a Youtube video.

It could also be to navigate the viewer to other video content created by them.

You can calculate CTR by dividing the number of views by the number of clicks. This number needs to be relatively higher in order to conclude that your video was successful.

What to do in case of bad CTRs?

• Move the placement of your CTA to a segment where engagement was high
• Try using actionable words in your CTA and A/B test CTAs
• Keep titles engaging and make a promise
• Identify the sources and promote your videos wherever lucrative

You can always get back to tweaking your strategies if your numbers are not flattering.

While we are at this, it is also important to understand the next step in the cycle — conversion rate. Here’s a peek into the meaning/definition.

5. Analytics need not always be just numbers

There is some qualitative data that you simply cannot skip. These components make it strikingly apparent that your video is a grand success.

Qualitative data includes the sentiment analysis in the things your audiences have to say through comments, DMs, or by reaching out to you through emails. By scouring through the sentiments of your audiences on a collective whole, you can gauge the overall sentiment and understand the kind of impact it has on your brand as a whole.

Source: Clearvoice

Now, these sentiments can be negative too. For instance, if there are too many dislikes in the case of Youtube), in addition to other qualitative analysis, you can be conclusive about the fact that your message is wrong in the video.

Observe what your audiences are commenting — if a majority of people appreciate something, do not like a particular segment of your video, or request you to create similar content.

This metric holds true for any type of video you create — whether an explainer video, a tutorial, a demo, how-to, or a video on a social message. You’ll have to analyze sentiments for every video you create.

Apart from video shares, another interesting measure would be that of analyzing how many brands and individuals feature your video and link to it. If influencers are talking about it and creating content around it. These may not be numerical data, but yet very important to measure.

However, don’t be nitpicking on this as there is no standard way to measure it. You cannot be accurate with your numbers here but it is fine as long as you don’t completely oversee them.

Conclusion

Pareto’s 80/20 principle holds good for the content world too.

Direct 20% of your efforts towards creating content and the rest 80% towards chipping the heck out of the data and making the content viable. Just remember that every piece of content you create must tie back to the efforts you take.

Create videos that people love, enjoy, and appreciate.

And how do you know that?

Measure, measure, and measure.

While analytics may sound a tad bit intimidating, you’ve got to geek out and step out of your comfort zone to make content work for you.