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NicheVideoMedia’s Definitive Guide to Video Metrics

Your success with videos can be charted using a set of definitive metrics. You are going to learn what they are, understand why they matter and see how you can improve them. If you are investing a lot of time on videos – at least a couple of hours every week – you will gain tremendously from this knowledge.

This article will expose you to several ways in which you can use this guide to improve your results.

View Count

This refers to the number of times your video was played.

This is the first metric you will maximize. Without enough views, there will not be enough conversions (sign-ups, subscriptions, response to call-to-actions, sales, etc.).

You can increase View Count by

  • sharing your video on social media (promoting it on Facebook);
  • tagging it properly;
  • using a ranking keyword for the video title;
  • spreading among influencers;
  • advertising it using Pay-Per-Click (PPC) ads;
  • writing and distributing a press release (if it warrants one);
  • finding the major source of traffic and multiplying it,

and doing everything within your grasp to get it in front of the right target audience.

Engagement Rate

How do you calculate this?

Its easy! Divide the number of minutes or hours that a viewer watched a video by the total length of the video. The higher the number the better it is.

This is probably the most important metric you should be concerned about. A high engagement rate indicates that users stuck till the end of the video rather than dropping out near the beginning. It also means that they are benefitting from it. A low engagement rate could indicate presence of pre-roll ads, low content quality or a poor playback experience.

So how can you improve the engagement rate? Try optimizing the video title to be accurate and descriptive. Also see at which point the dropout rate is the most and see what could be improved near that frame.

Play Rate

This refers to the fraction of the number of times the video player loaded to the number of times the video was played.

Play Rate tells whether the player is placed on a visible location of the website (above the fold mostly) and if the video thumbnail is compelling. Some video platforms charge for player loads in their bandwidth fees, and a low Play Rate in those cases will signal a higher financial impact with very little Return On Investment (ROI).

You can improve the Play Rate by improving its context, reducing ad clutter and testing different video thumbnails.

Watch Time

This is an important metric that determines how often the video will be recommended when related videos are played. It is calculated by taking a proportion of the number of times the entire video is played to the number of times the play button is pressed.

Come to think of it: a well-written piece of script leads the reader from one sentence to the next. Gently leading from one rich nugget of interest, insight, concern, desire, hope, possibility to the next, until the last sentence directs the reader to take one call to action that benefits them and the marketer.

A marketing video has the same goal. To move the viewer one step closer to the brand, product, service, or offer. Frequently, it happens in the last few seconds of the video. Therefore, you have to make the video supervaluable if you want the viewer to stick till the last moments when you make the ‘ask’.

Social Sharing

Social represents the online counterpart of word-of-mouth, except that it has a longer life, can go far and wide, and makes it easy to share.

There are plenty of tools like ShareThis and Shareoholic that make it easy to share your video on social media platforms. Plugin one of them and viewthe video’s popularity through countson social media platforms.

Tips to increase the shareability of your videos:

  • Expressly ask people to share the video either in the video itself or in the description section
  • Give easy-peasy sharing buttons. Most people are always shared within their social media accounts, and if the video is great theywill be happy to share with their network.
  • Make the video itself extremely valuable, funny, outrageous, exciting, informative, and honest.

Comments

This is one of the oldest ways to engage your audience, and stays valuable to this day. Comments offer a rich source of insight into your reader’s mind. It clarifies how valuable your video is and about any information gaps in it. They offer a wealth of ideas for your future videos.

A high number of comments indicate that your content is highly, offensive, entertaining, or funny. Make sure it impacts your viewer positively.

Obviously, to benefit from audience insight through comments, you first have to have them. How to kick off comments under your videos:

  • Ask a question
  • Ask for the viewer’s opinion
  • Offer to address viewer’s doubts and questions
  • Ask them to link to related information
  • Ask viewers to suggest alternative solutions

Player Load Times

This refers to the time it takes to load the video player. Users start abandoning the videos that delay loading even by two seconds. Every additional one second of delay leads to an increase of 5.8% in abandonment rate. Viewers who receive a re-buffering delay of 1% of the total video length play 5% less of the video when compared with someone who didn’t experience re-buffering.

Ways to improve player load time

  • Make sure the weight of the player is small
  • Load the player from a CDN (Content Delivery Network)
  • Load the video after the other page elements are loaded
  • Utilize browser caching that benefits repeat visitors

or simply use a professional video platform like NicheVideo Media.

Re-watches

This refers to the number of times that a video is watched fully or partly either by an individual or by all the viewers in aggregate.

A re-watch could indicate that a specific portion or the entire video is superuseful or confusing. If it’s the former, you can try to move the re-watchers down into your sales funnel; if it is the latter, you need to make your messaging clearer.

How to increase re-watches

  • Create videos that address real needs and concerns of your audience

Unique Views

This refers to the number of views from different IPs and devices. While it may seem to be an equivalent to the unique number of people who watched the video, it is really not so. The same person might watch the video from two different devices.

Video Availability

This refers to the number of times the video playback started successfully. This is a very important metric. If someone arrives at the page expectedly, has the video player load successfully, but still can’t watch the video for a reason, it shows that something is not quite right. Either the page is out of date or the video provider needs to be notified.

Re-buffers

This refers to the number of times and the duration of interruptions due to re-buffering of the video. More the re-buffers, worse the viewer experience.

How to reduce re-buffers?

  • If quality of the streaming can be reduced without impact to the messaging, please do it.
  • Offer varying video resolution levels based on user bandwidth.
  • Load the video fully or partly (to the level where the video will not interrupt) before playing it.
  • Match the size of the video with your average user internet speed

Please do not try to optimize all the metrics at the same time. One will influence another, and you will lose focus. Pick one to three relevant metrics and work on them for a week or two. As you get used to optimizing metrics, you will know which one to optimize next.