How to Track and Optimize Your Video Ad Campaign Performance

• Tracking video ad campaign performance involves using video-specific measurement metrics.
• Different tools and platforms offer different options in how you can analyze video ad performance.
• Optimization of video ads requires careful data analysis to see where drop-offs are happening and fixing problem areas.

Video is one of the most effective ways to market your business. This comes as no surprise considering the engagement value video offers over other mediums, such as text and static images. Every social media and networking platform has pivoted to video in a huge way over the last decade.

However, there’s a catch to this. With everyone implementing video ads, how can you ensure yours stand out? Here’s all you need to know about tracking and optimizing performance for your video ad campaign.

Which Metrics Should You Be Tracking?

The first thing you’ll want clarity on is how to measure and track your video ad campaign performance. The metrics you use for video advertising are quite different from those you’d use for, say, search or display ads — at least with respect to measuring engagement.

Furthermore, ads targeting different parts of the funnel require different metrics.

1. Awareness Metrics

• Impressions: Cost per mille (CPM) is the cost to achieve a thousand impressions or views of your ad
• Reach: This is the number of unique people who have watched your video at least once
• Frequency: Average number of times your ad was watched by the same person

2. Engagement Metrics

• Watch Time: The average amount of time people have watched your video
• Hook Rate: This is the percentage of times that your video was played for at least three seconds

[Hook Rate = (No. of 3-second plays ÷ Impressions) x 100]

• ThruPlays: The number of times your video was watched for 15 seconds or to completion (97%)
• Hold Rate: The percentage of times that your video was played to completion after being watched for at least three seconds

[Hold Rate = (ThruPlays ÷ No. of 3-second plays) x 100]

3. Conversion Metrics

• CTR: The click-through rate is the percentage of users who clicked on your video.
• CVR: The conversion rate is the percentage of people who performed a certain action after clicking, such as adding a product to cart, making a purchase, signing up, and more.
• CAC: The customer acquisition cost is what you spend on average to acquire a customer.
• ROAS: The return on ad spend is the pipeline revenue you generated from running your ads.

Tracking each of these metrics to analyze shortfalls will help boost your video ad campaign’s performance.

Tracking and Attributing Video Success On Different Platforms

In order to track campaign performance, you will need access to various tools and interfaces. The most important of these include the platforms where you’re running your video ads. Crucially, these platforms also give you options on how to attribute credit for ad conversions. This is an important step in helping you identify which videos are working and which parts of your video ad campaign need optimization.

1. Meta Ads Manager

This allows you to track video ad campaign performance on Facebook, Instagram, and Threads. It offers you a host of metrics and analytics options for your video campaign. It allows for two different types of attribution:

• Standard: This allows advertisers to select whether to credit conversions to impressions, clicks, and other engagement metrics. This is the ideal mode for video ads, since it allows for attributing conversion to video engagement.
• Incremental: This mode leverages AI to predict whether an ad is responsible for a conversion. It offers reporting based on incremental conversions.

2. Google Ads

This interface lets you track video ad campaign performance across the entirety of Google’s network. This includes ads on Google AdSense, AdMob, and YouTube. You can also pull up deeper engagement analytics for your YouTube ads, including audience retention and drop-offs, on YouTube Studio Analytics.

Google offers a similar attribution model to Meta:

• Last Click: Attributes all of the credit to the last-clicked ad and corresponding keyword.
• Data-Driven: Takes into account your past data for similar conversion actions and distributes credit for the conversion across events.

3. TikTok Ads Manager

This lets you track video ad campaign performance on TikTok, offering metrics native to the platform’s unique format. Conversion attribution is offered based on various events:

• Click-Through Attribution (CTA): For conversions based on a click
• View-Through Attribution (VTA): For conversions based on a view, but without a click
• Engaged View-Through Attribution (EVTA): For conversions based on a view-time of six seconds or more.

4. Google Analytics

Google Analytics is crucial to help you monitor the entire conversion path, including on-site actions. Once an ad directs people to your landing page, the ad pixels and UTMs embedded in your site code will help you track conversion performance for the video ads in your campaign, including for purchases, sign-ups, trial downloads, and more.

How to Optimize Video Ad Performance

Once you have all your tracking tools in place, you’ll want to use that data to optimize performance for your ads. Here are some tips to help you do that.

1. Identify Drop-Off Points

Review the entire conversion path to see where drop-offs are happening. Hold rate and audience retention graphs will tell you if this is happening in the middle of the video. A low hook rate, on the other hand, likely means your video thumbnail isn’t scroll-stopping to begin with.

If your ThruPlays are high and CTR is low, it means your CTA or offer needs work. If the CTR is high and on-site conversions are low, it means your landing page needs work or that there’s a disconnect in your messaging. Tracking these metrics across your campaign will help you improve performance for your video ads.

2. Run Matrix Tests

A/B testing is a proven way to optimize video ad performance. It involves creating two or more variants for your ad, typically with just one aspect changed. This could be slightly different messaging or CTAs, and analyzing which one performs better.

3. Optimize for Mobile

Over 90% of social media browsing happens on mobile. You’ll want your ads to be native to each platform, including TikTok, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, or even on Connected TV (CTV) platforms.

4. Include Interactive Elements

In tracking your video ad campaign performance, you may realize that sometimes, simply content isn’t enough to generate engagement. You may need to invite action via interactive elements, such as polls, quizzes, or clickable hotspots that will get your viewers more involved in the experience. You can also run shoppable video ads on TikTok and Instagram to allow viewers to purchase products directly from the ads.

We’ve Run Over 300,000 Social Video Ads. They’ve Generated Over $1BN in Revenue

Tracking and optimizing performance for your video ad campaign can be a nuanced craft. At Chamber Media, we combine an industry-leading team of video producers and ad buyers with proprietary AI-powered data tools that have given us an 85% success rate with our video ads. Talk with us to see how we can replicate this success for your brand.