Engagement Metrics That Matter
Every publisher should regularly monitor video engagement analytics to better understand their audience viewing habits. By defining and tracking weekly or bi-weekly goals, publishers can more effectively drive audience engagement and therefore their long-term potential for increased ad revenue.
Video engagement can be measured by a number of success metrics on the content level as well as on the viewer level. In a free report from JW Player, over 51% of publishers report increasing video engagement to be their top challenge. Understanding and measuring video engagement is increasingly important for publishers due to trends from the past several years—accelerated since the onset of the 2020 pandemic. Video engagement can have an impact on potential ad revenue, so by knowing and measuring the below metrics, publishers can achieve additional revenue and engagement success.
Top 6 Engagement Metrics to Measure Video Engagement
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Complete Rate
One of the most useful measures of video engagement is the video completion rate which measures completes against plays. A high complete rate shows that a video can keep a viewer engaged through its entirety. For some publishers, measuring complete rate by device can provide useful insight into which platforms work best for which content.
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Partial Complete Rate
While measuring the complete rate is useful to know which videos are watched to completion, knowing partial complete rates is another helpful analytic measurement. Partial complete rates are measured in quartiles of 25%, 50%, and 75%. These metrics provide a more granular view into how long viewers stayed engaged with a video asset. It helps publishers to optimize video duration and CTA placement by understanding common drop-off points.
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Time Watched
The Average Time Watched measurement presents the total duration of content watched across all embedded players, measured in seconds. The total amount of time viewers spend with your content is a good benchmark to measure your performance against on a monthly basis.
For more metrics across the JW Player network, download our free Video Engagement industry report for publishers.
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Unique Viewers
This measurement provides the number of unique viewers who have watched at least one of your videos, a metric that illustrates your true audience reach. Just like with website traffic, knowing your total unique viewers provides insight into your return viewer rates, which many advertisers may be interested to know.
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Plays and Time-Watched Per Viewer
These measurements demonstrate how much content the average unique viewer is consuming on your site. This is a good benchmark to regularly track against as it determines if the average viewer is gaining or losing interest in your videos.
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Ad Impressions Per Viewer
This measurement represents the average number of ad impressions for a unique viewer, painting a clearer picture of revenue potential and viewer experience. Alternatively, this could also be measured as Ad Impressions per play.
The chart below shows how many ads per play are viewed across the JW Player network of 12,000+ publishers, from January 2020 to January 2021. There was a 47.9% increase in ads per play over the past year. Predictably, video consumption has grown at a similar rate.
For more metrics across the JW Player network, download our free Video Engagement industry report for publishers.
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Looking for more insight on video engagement metrics that matter?
Download the free report from JW Player with actionable insights. Using data collected from over 12,000 publishers and billions of video views, JW Player offers the most comprehensive data of owned-and-operated video publishers on the web. Download the Video Engagement report here.
