Why do data led creative decisions matter?

Marketing has always involved a degree of instinct, a feel for what resonates, what looks right and what tells a story. But instinct without data leaves too much to chance, especially at the scale paid social operates today. Which video to run, how long to make it, what to lead with, a single creative decision here can be the difference between a campaign that builds an audience and one that quietly burns budget.

The problem is that most default reporting wasn’t built with creative optimisation in mind. Metrics like CTR, CPM, and CPC are delivery metrics that tell you how efficiently an ad reached people and whether those people clicked. However, they say nothing about what actually happened in between, whether the video held attention for two seconds or twenty, or whether the message landed before someone scrolled on.

For campaign types such as Awareness and Engagement, where video creative plays a key role in introducing the brand to new audiences, this level of engagement data often sits outside the default reporting view entirely. The creative is the product at this stage of the funnel, and without it, there’s no way to know if it’s actually working. We built the Video Specific view to add the metrics that fill this gap, so creative performance can be assessed alongside cost and conversion data in the same table.

What does each video performance metric measure?

• What is Thumbstop Rate?

  How many people who saw the ad actually stopped scrolling to watch it? Thumbstop rate answers this. It’s the share of impressions that became a 3-second view, making it the clearest signal of whether the opening seconds of a video are doing their job.
  Example: A video receives 10,000 impressions and 2,500 people watch at least 3 seconds, a thumbstop rate of 25%. That means 1 in 4 people who saw the ad stopped scrolling long enough to engage. This is exactly why the hook is always the most critical part of any video creative.

• What is Completion Rate?

  Stopping the scroll is only half the challenge. Completion rate shows whether viewers stayed for the whole video, and a high thumbstop rate paired with a low completion rate is a clear signal that something in the body of the edit is losing people before the message lands.
  Example: A video with 4,000 views and 800 viewers who watched to the end has a completion rate of 20%. One fifth of everyone who started the video stayed for the whole thing.

• What is Plays at 100%?

  Rates need volume to mean anything. Plays at 100% is the raw count of full views, sitting alongside the percentages so you can immediately see whether a strong rate is backed by real scale, or drawn from a handful of impressions.
  Example: A creative shows a 40% completion rate, but plays at 100% reveals that this represents 200 full views, not 2,000. When volume is low, treat high rates as an early signal to watch rather than a proven result to act on.

How to read video metrics?

Below, we’ve pulled an anonymised extract from a recent account we have been working on. This showcases different types of creatives and proves how essential these video specific metrics truly are.

How to interpret video performance data?

Reach does not indicate attention The Founder Story creative received the most impressions in the account, 408,272, but recorded just a 3.1% thumbstop rate and 15.2% completion. High delivery volume did not translate into engagement. Product Demo 1, with far less reach at 24,745 impressions, held 41.5% of its viewers to completion, the strongest in this extract. This shows how completion rate and impression count are not directly correlated.

Why impressions are in the view: Impressions are included to give context to the performance rates, not as a success metric in themselves. A 40% completion rate drawn from 21 impressions carries very little weight, since the volume is simply too small to be actionable.

Read every rate against its volume The 52.4% thumbstop rate on the Signature Series test is the highest figure in the table, but it comes from only 21 impressions and 11 plays. At that volume, the rate is not statistically meaningful. Because the view keeps impression and play counts on screen next to each rate, a high percentage on negligible volume is easy to identify rather than mistake for a proven result.

Engagement can be read alongside conversions Product Demo 2 was the only creative in this extract with recorded sales: CVR 2.4%, ROAS 1.9x, and CPA £65. It also recorded the highest thumbstop rate among the higher-volume creatives (9.5%) and a 29.9% completion rate. In this case, stronger engagement metrics accompanied the only measurable revenue, a relationship that a click-based metric alone (its CTR was 0.4%) would not surface.

How to use these video performance metrics in practice?

A low thumbstop rate points to the opening: the first few seconds aren’t stopping the scroll, and that’s where we’d focus revisions.

A reasonable thumbstop rate paired with a low completion rate suggests viewers are engaging initially but dropping off through the body of the edit.

Where both rates hold up, we check impression volume and downstream metrics, ROAS and CPA, before drawing conclusions or scaling spend.

Which creative considerations should you take for stronger video performance?

A few practical points we keep in mind when reviewing these metrics and briefing creative changes:

• 1. Lead with the hook
  The first 3 seconds carry more weight than anything else. Introduce the product, brand, or key message immediately, don’t build to it.
• 2. Keep it concise
  Shorter edits, typically 15 to 20 seconds, tend to hold stronger completion rates on Meta placements like Reels and Stories.
• 3. Open with movement
  Static openings struggle to hold attention. Fast-paced cuts, motion graphics, or people-led content perform better in the first few frames.
• 4. Brand early
  Ensure the product or brand appears early in the edit. Saving branding for the end means most viewers will never see it.