Many video production companies drool over vanity metrics. You'll hear, "50,000 views. Good job, team!"
High fives all around [hands slapping].
It's hard not to focus on these numbers. I get it.
Take Feeders Pet Supply. We're all really happy with the results: for every $1 Feeders Pet Supply spent in this campaign, they put $4.50 back into their pockets—that's an impressive Return on Ad Spend (ROAS).
Our hero commercial is legit. It's high-energy. It received 500,000 views on YouTube.
Don't get me wrong, you should be tracking these metrics. They're important. But when you're making a serious investment in video marketing services, you must measure so much more.
You need deeper insights. Your views must translate to value. Here's what we're providing our clients these days as we've evolved to help them reach their business goals through the power of video and strategic storytelling.
Brand Impact Metrics
Brand metrics impact your bottom line. 47% of customers view 3 to 5 pieces of content before they'll even consider talking with your sales team. So, any video production company you're considering working with should be able to tell you how campaigns affect your brand.
Some things they should provide include Brand Lift Studies (BLS), Earned Media Value (EMV), and Sentiment Analysis.
Brand Lift Studies
Measuring brand lift isn't about clicks or conversions. It focuses on the effect on how people think or feel about your brand. Some campaigns can really benefit from a brand lift study. When you're trying to validate your media mix, launch a new product or service, or invest serious cash in video marketing services, you'll want to see how it's affecting people's perceptions.
BLS digs deeper by using surveys for both the sample and the control groups.
Google and Meta offer extensive documentation on how to set up these studies on their platforms. It can be overwhelming if you're not familiar with the ins and outs. There are minimum budget requirements that vary by country. Since we're a video production company committed to serving businesses in Lexington, Kentucky (our home base), and across the nation, we're operating in accordance with YouTube's Country B requirements.
It's already getting to be a bit overwhelming, right?
That's why we begin with a business-first approach. We start with our client's goals (maybe it's sales, retention, or brand growth), and reverse-engineer the creative processes needed to achieve them. We want to define success from the start. If BLS fits within that plan, we guide you through that process, make it easy to understand, and monitor the metrics that move the needle for your business growth.
Earned Media Value
Earned Media Value (EMV) tells you how much money you're making from free publicity your brand receives. It lets you know what you would have paid for in advertising space or time to get the same result with things like word of mouth, news articles, or social media posts.
So if a customer of yours shares the product video we created for you on their Instagram story, that's EMV. We use tools like Brandwatch and Meltwater to help keep tabs on all of the EMV our campaigns bring in.
I love measuring EMV.
I'm a firm believer in strategic storytelling. Videos aren't art for art's sake; they're tools for growth. When you do it right, it's going to get shared.
We've collaborated with Big Ass Fans (this link is an example of EMV by the way, they didn't pay me to add it) on three of their products now: the Cool Space 400 Cooler, the Torrent Portable Misting Fan, and the Black Jack Directional Fan. Anytime they use our product videos in a press release, those videos turn views into value. Imagine earning $10 for every 1,000 times the video is watched. That's powerful stuff. It's what we do.
Sentiment Analysis
It's not easy to quantify how people feel about something. But that's the power of sentiment analysis. Data from social media posts or a write-up on a review blog are qualitative in nature. Sentiment analysis is the process of putting metrics to it. Is what people are saying about the product or service you offer positive, negative, or neutral?
One of the things I value about StoryVid is that we operate as an extension of our clients' teams, not as outside vendors.
A video production company should join in on what you're doing. They should be using Hootsuite or Brand24 to give you insights into how your target audience perceives what you're offering.
Sentiment analysis can inform decision-making. Support tickets are a great source for sentiment analysis. I hear this a lot when I speak with leaders in the medical device and biotech space.
It's hard for them to simplify complex topics. Their in-house teams struggle to produce product videos that viewers can easily follow. This means they're receiving more and more support questions as the confusion and negative sentiment compound.
We keep tabs on these metrics to make sure that our work is positively affecting how people feel about our clients' offerings.
Once you have the big picture by gauging brand metrics, you have to peel back another layer.
Engagement Metrics
Data from Wyzol's 2025 State of Video Marketing survey shows that 88% of video marketers say video has helped increase user understanding of their product or service.
To find out whether or not our campaigns are tying back to your goals with things like Net Promoter Scores (NPS), we review metrics like view rate, average watch time, retention rate, completion rate, and interaction rate. We put these data points together to tell a larger story.
View and Completion Rate
View rate tracks the percentage of impressions that turn into at least a 3-second view. It's the first hurdle, and it's one of the first metrics we use to get a pulse on how well our videos are landing.
Is the hook effective? Do the opening frame, the first line, and visuals do enough to capture the audience's attention? These are the questions our team is asking.
View rate is where creative meets targeting. A low view rate could mean your video isn't compelling, or that you're showing it to the wrong audience. We dig into both.
The nice thing about this metric is that you can find it easily on most platform dashboards. YouTube calls it the percentage of impressions viewed. Meta labels it as view-through rate.
Your video production company should be able to hit between a 30% to 50% view rate for a short-form video. Anything below 30% and you've got a thumbnail problem, a hook problem, or both. People are seeing your video and choosing to keep scrolling. That's fixable, but you need to know it's happening first.
Thankfully, we've made StoryVid nimble and adaptive. When we notice a problem, our consultative process can really dig deep to identify the root issues behind a video's performance. We geek out over this stuff.
I keep tabs on academic journals and have our team use their research to inform our decision-making processes. For example, researchers Koh and Cui (2022) found this out:
"Using data collected from 3,745 marketing videos posted by 38 top brands across 4 industries – the automobile, beverage, restaurant, and toy industries – on YouTube, we show that these visual attributes of thumbnails have statistically significant relations with the view-through of videos, which may suggest that these visual attributes persuade potential viewers to click and watch videos …"
They used the Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM), a model of persuasion that explains how people process information, to confirm what our team already knew: 90 percent of the best-performing YouTube videos feature custom thumbnails.
If viewers are finishing your videos, that's your completion rate metric. It means that if you have a high completion rate, your video production company delivered a valuable asset. Of course, completion rate drops as video length increases. A 15-second video hitting 80% completion?
Totally achievable. A 3-minute video hitting 60%? That's some amazing work.
From initial planning to video production to measuring results, we guide you through every nook and cranny you need to meet your business objectives.
Average Watch Time and Retention Rate
Average watch time, like completion rate, tells a larger story about how long viewers are sticking around. Retention rate shows you exactly where they bail. These metrics reveal whether your content holds attention or loses it—and more importantly, where the story may be falling apart.
YouTube Analytics provides an audience retention graph.
It provides crucial feedback. You can see exactly when people check out. TikTok Analytics does the same thing. If you see a drop within 1 minute, 30 30-second videos at the 20-second mark, then the video's pacing must have flattened out. Or, if there's a clear nose-dive at the 45-second spot, your middle might have dragged.
Aim for 50-70% retention. That means that if your video is 60 seconds long, most viewers should watch at least 30-42 seconds of it. Anything less, and your message won't land the way it needs to meet your business objectives.
Use average watch time and retention data to refine your videos.
Interaction Rate
When the Lewis Honors College at the University of Kentucky approached StoryVid to reimagine their brand overview video, I was excited. I'm an alum for one (Go Cats!), but I also value working with higher educational institutions because recruitment is not an easy space to be in. An awesome video production company can really help connect with potential students.
The video we created for them was story-driven. We covered dorm life, classroom interactions, global opportunities, and faculty insights in a fresh way. That video far outperformed anything they had before. But what our team and theirs are most satisfied with is how students continue to share it on their social media feeds.
Interaction rate metrics are crucial indicators. This is where things like Earned Media Value and sales leads really begin to take shape. If people are liking, commenting, and sharing, then your video really struck a chord. That's what we live for.
Audience Behavior Metrics
Imagine with me: we created an awesome video and campaign for you. The views, interaction, and brand lift study are really giving a boost, but we're not done yet. We want you to know the next steps your audience is taking. If they're landing on your quote page and reaching out to your sales team, you need to know where they came from.
Traffic Sources
Traffic sources tell you which videos are actually driving people to your website or app. This is where you can see how our work is generating new revenue or expansion deals for your company.
We track this using tools like Google Analytics. We add urchin tracking module (UTM) codes to every link. Think of them as digital breadcrumbs.
Ideally, you want 10-20% of your site traffic to come from video campaigns. Anything less, and your videos might be entertaining, but they're not working hard enough for your business.
When you work with StoryVid, you're getting a creative team that knows and talks results and closely monitors traffic sources.
Our work goes beyond video production and ensures viewers land where you want them to. We don't guess. We measure. We verify. We provide actionable reports.
Calls To Action
Many videos are paired with calls to action (CTAs) such as "Shop Now" or "Learn More." Does anyone actually click?
That's what Click-Through Rate (CTR) measures. It's the percentage of viewers who take that next step.
You can track CTR through multiple channels: Bitly links for custom tracking, native platform analytics, and tools like Hotjar that show heatmaps of where people actually click. Each method gives us slightly different insights, but together they paint a more complete picture.
Video ads should be hitting a 1 to 3% CTR. Seems low. But keep in mind that a 2% CTR on a video ad like the one I talked about earlier for Feeder Pet Supply, with 500,000 views, would result in 10,000 people taking action on your CTA.
That's incredible.
Bounce Rate
Now that people have clicked, how long do they stay on a page?
Bounce rate tells you whether they hit the back button or interacted with your offering or product further. A high bounce rate from video traffic means something's off — either the video sets wrong expectations, or your landing page isn't delivering what the video promised.
We monitor this in Google Analytics, which you can find under the "Behavior" tab, "Site Content."
This is why any video production company you hire should be willing to collaborate so that your efforts and theirs work together seamlessly. We connect creativity with strategy, ensuring every video delivers meaningful outcomes for the brands we partner with.
Content Effectiveness Metrics
Some professionals in video marketing services overlook the technical aspects of their work. They create great video ads, but they take five seconds to load on the client's website. That's a problem.
There are a couple of key indicators we look at to make sure the work we produce isn't losing viewers due to poor performance.
Video Speed Index
We take a close look at the Video Speed Index, which measures the time to the first frame, and we especially focus on mobile (where most people watch).
Every second of delay costs you viewers who may never come back. We can also help you choose the best video format so it doesn't slow down your site.
We track this using Google PageSpeed Insights and optimize through YouTube upload settings. You'll really want to shoot for less than 3 seconds. This is a benchmark Google prefers for other speed metrics they value, like Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), as well.
I've seen videos with nearly identical content perform almost 30% better simply because one loaded faster. That's not a creative problem. You can't overlook optimization.
File compression, hosting choices, encoding settings—this stuff matters.
A/B Tests
I loved the shoots we did for Uptown Cheapskate. It felt right from the start. But I also know that not running A/B tests on all of our work is a disservice to our clients. Again, we don't guess. We don't assume. We test. We optimize. We test everything.
Thumbnail images. Title phrasing. Video length. CTA placement. Hook styles. Every audience is different. What works for one client might tank for another. Testing tells us what your audience responds to best.
We run these tests using YouTube Experiments and Meta's A/B Testing tool. Each platform serves different versions to similar audience segments, then tracks which one performs better.
Sometimes the results validate our direction, but there are times when we need to rethink our approach.
Out of all the metrics we've talked about, using A/B testing is one I'm most proud of. We're committed to these three things beyond our own creative opinions:
- We want to increase our clients' conversions and engagement
- By the end of any campaign, your brand receives a boost in trust and loyalty
- There should be no doubt that we're a video production company that delivered an amazing return on investment (ROI)
A/B testing is one of those crucial components that helps us meet those commitments. When we find a thumbnail that drives 40% more clicks, or an intro that boosts retention by 35%, we've unlocked something powerful.
Making Your Videos Valuable With The Right Metrics
Video is the crown jewel of marketing. It's not just my bias. This data from Wyzol's 2025 State of Video Marketing survey proves it:
- 91% of businesses use video as a marketing tool
- A video convinced 87% of respondents to purchase a company's product or service.
- 88% of video marketers say video has helped increase user understanding of their product or service.
But doing video right goes beyond vanity metrics like ROAS and views. What it really boils down to is that a video production company worth its salt is providing you with much more data; they should share a mix of engagement, audience behavior, content effectiveness, and brand impact metrics. These provide deeper insights into how viewers interact with and respond to your videos across platforms such as YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn.
