Video Marketing ROI: Part 2 – What Your Video Analytics Mean for Your Marketing Strategy

Video Marketing ROI: Part 2 – What Your Video Analytics Mean for Your Marketing Strategy

Applying analytics to marketing strategy will look different for everyone. The results and how you respond to them will have a lot to do with which platforms on which you host and promote your videos as well as the goals for your campaign. Keep your unique situation in mind as you read your analytics report. 

In part one of this video marketing analytics series, we defined the common analytics vocabulary so that you can easily read your video reports. In this next part, we will dive deeper into what those results mean for your marketing strategy.

High Impressions With Low Views

As an example, you might have a branding video on the homepage of your website. You’re noticing in your analytics report that you have ten thousand impressions but only two views.

If you are seeing a high number of impressions paired with a meager number of views, there are a few ways to interpret the results. On the one hand, it is common for views to be lower than impressions because of the nature of how platforms count impressions and views. There is also no real standard to the threshold that a view rate must reach to be considered satisfactory. On the other hand, if the number of views is much lower than you feel it should be, there are a few issues to consider.

Your Video Is Easy to Miss

One issue that could cause a low view rate is that people are not actually seeing the video on the page. Assess where you’ve located the video, such as if it’s on the bottom or easy to miss. Remember that many platforms count the loading of a video as an impression without considering whether the person actually scrolls to see it. To rectify this, you should put your video as close to the top of the page as possible.

Your Site Host Is Blocking the Data

If visibility is not the issue, another thing to consider is that the website might be blocking data from the video hosting site. In this case, there’s not much you can do without changing the code. Embedded code is typically better than embedded URL links for this reason, but understanding that data is not fully reported would at least solve the discrepancy.

Unappealing or Nonfunctioning Video Player

One of the most common mistakes in video marketing is a nonexistent or unappealing thumbnail. Without a thumbnail, visitors have a difficult time understanding what the video is about and why they should watch it. Appealing thumbnails catch attention and persuade visitors to at least give the video a chance. Consider adding or changing your video thumbnail to improve the view rate of your video.

In addition, video players sometimes don’t work properly depending on how you’ve added them to your website. The visitor might be clicking play, but the video doesn’t work or takes too long to load, both of which will seriously impact your view rate. Ensure your video player is working properly by testing your site’s functionality and speed.

Low Average Watch Percentage

The average watch percentage is really important because this result determines whether people are engaged in the entire video and reach the end. Most of the time, it is critical that the viewer reaches the end of the video so that they are exposed to your chosen call-to-action (CTA). 

If the average watch percentage is only 5%, that means you’ve already lost your audience’s interest in the first few seconds of the video. If this is the case, review your video and ask yourself why the audience might be losing interest at the beginning of your video

Unengaging or Highly Persuasive?

Commonly, the average watch percentage is about 30-50%. One way to interpret this rate is to understand that your story might be too slow or that it might hit a lull in the middle. Maybe your video makes big promises and catches attention at the beginning, but takes too long to get to the punch line. 

Alternatively, this percentage range isn’t always a bad thing. It might also mean that your audience is converted before they reach the end of the video. For this reason, lower average watch percentages are not a perfect indicator of effectiveness – they should be taken in stride and combined with other analytics results, such as CTA clicks and submissions.

Interpreting the Number of Clicks and Submissions

When it comes to comparing your social media and website results, it is normal for the views on your social media to be lower than the views on your website. If you’re running targeted paid ads, make sure you’re paying attention to the clicks and submissions analytics related to those ads to make sure you have a significant ROI. You can retarget your ads to invest in a target audience that is working for you based on your analytics to improve your ROI.

Spend time reviewing your analytics to understand what they mean for your campaigns. If no one can find the video, or the video loses the audience’s attention, then you’ll likely have lower clicks and submissions regardless of where it is posted. Ultimately, clicks and submissions are the most important part of your analytics because this is where the buyer journey accelerates. 
If you need more help understanding your analytics reports, contact Monzo Media Productions.

Video Marketing ROI: Part 1 – Analytics Vocabulary

Video Marketing ROI: Part 1 – Analytics Vocabulary

Producing and distributing a video marketing campaign is only half the battle. Now, you need to monitor your results and use them to improve future campaigns. Without the vocabulary for your key performance indicators (KPI), you’ll have a difficult time understanding how much your video marketing is really benefiting your organization. 

Learning analytics vocabulary is essential to reading your videos’ analytics reports and understanding what those KPIs mean. Further, you’ll be able to pinpoint the weak spots in your campaign and course-correct. 

Part one of this series lists the most common and useful analytics terms and what they mean. The next part will help you implement what you’ve learned to improve your video marketing return on investment (ROI).

Impressions

An impression is counted by a platform when your video is loaded and noticed by someone. It’s important to understand that this is different than when someone watches your video. An impression is not a play, so your impressions will almost always be higher than your views. In other words, an impression is when you are scrolling through a feed and pass by some videos that you haven’t necessarily clicked on or watched but noticed as you scrolled.

Views

While impressions are counted just by scrolling through, views are tougher to accomplish. Each platform has its own policy for what counts as a view, but all of them require the person to take an active role in watching the video beyond scrolling past it. Some platforms require that the person clicks play, while others require that the viewer watches for at least three seconds or longer. Before you analyze your results, make sure to research each platform on which you host your video to understand which actions count as a view.

View Rate

View rate is different than views because it is a percentage rather than a number amount. You can find the view rate by dividing the number of views by the number of impressions. In other words, the view rate is the percentage of times a person scrolling by a video stops to watch it. If five people watch your video for every ten times a person scrolls by it, then there would be a 50% view rate.

Average Percentage Watched

The average percentage watched should not be confused with the view rate. Instead of the number of times a person has watched a video, the average percentage watched is the term for the average duration of a video that is watched. To calculate this percentage, you would divide the length of the video typically watched by the full length of the video. In other words, if a person has watched three minutes of a five-minute video, they would have watched 60% of the video. You could choose to calculate this number across all platforms hosting your video, or look at the average of each platform individually for different analyses. Overall, this result is a great way to start understanding whether you have high-engagement videos.

CTA Card Clicks

Not every platform has call-to-action (CTA) cards, but if you are publishing on a platform like YouTube or Vimeo, you’ll have the option to create CTA cards that tell your viewer what to do next after watching the video. For these platforms, you’ll have the opportunity to analyze how effective your CTA cards are as well. The most common analytic for CTA cards is “clicks,” which would tell you how many times your viewers have followed through on the direction you’ve given them.

Submissions

Finally, “submissions” is another analytical tool that isn’t available on every platform but is very valuable to use. The number of submissions will tell you how many times your viewers have submitted information through a form you’ve created for the video. For example, if you prompt them to submit their email address, you’ll be able to see how persuasive you were in obtaining email addresses through your video marketing campaign.

Use Analytics to Understand Your Video Marketing ROI

Looking through data isn’t an exciting task for most people, but it’s necessary. If your goal is to obtain an email list of prospects, how will you know if you’re successful without digging into the number of submissions your video has gained? By learning to read analytics, you’ll more deeply understand how your audience is interacting with your videos and what you can do to create more effective video marketing campaigns in the future. 

Analytics helps you get a tangible ROI from your video marketing efforts. In the second part of this series, we will dive into how you can turn this knowledge into actionable insights. 
For more information on understanding analytics vocabulary, contact Monzo Media Productions.