View-Through Rate (VTR): What It Means and How to Calculate It
View-through rate tells you how many people who were served your video ad went on to watch enough of it for the view to count. Learn how to calculate it, how it differs from VTC, and what you can do to get more people to stop, watch, and engage with your video ads.
In advertising, engagement rates are a huge tell of how successful a campaign is likely to be. One of the most important engagement metrics for video ads is known as view-through rate.
It’s basically a percentage of video impressions that end in a completed video view. But as you’ll soon discover, ad platforms have different definitions of what is considered a view.
In today’s article, we’re explaining view-through rate in detail, exploring why it’s important and how you can improve it.
Key takeaways
- VTR shows the percentage of ad impressions that result in a qualifying video view.
- The definition of a ‘view’ varies by advertising platform.
- VTR tells you if people are watching, while VTC shows how well your video holds their attention through to the end.
- A high VTR doesn't guarantee clicks, conversions, or sales, so measure it alongside metrics like CTR, CPA, and ROAS.
What is View Through Rate (VTR)?
View-through rate measures the percentage of video impressions that result in a completed video view.
It’s akin to asking, ‘of the people that had the chance to watch a video, how many watched it to the end or up to a certain point?’
It’s useful for gauging whether your hook is interesting enough to make people want to watch more of a video ad.
Ad platforms use this rate to understand whether a particular video ad deserves more airspace because viewers seem to be interacting with it from the get-go.
As we mentioned earlier, ad platforms have different benchmarks for what they consider a view.
On Meta, for example, they measure 2-second, 3-second views, and 15-second views. Other platforms may define a view based on how much of the video someone watched, such as 25% or 50%.
So, a 20% VTR on one platform may not represent the same viewing behavior as a 20% VTR on another if their qualifying-view definitions differ.
Why is this metric necessary when we already have impressions?
Well, impressions just mean that a certain number of people got shown your ad. It doesn’t mean that they stopped to watch it. They could have:
- Scrolled past immediately
- Seen the first few seconds
- Watched for longer
- Watched the entire video
View-through rate gives us a better idea of how many people watched the video to a certain point after the ad was served.
View-through rate formula
This is the formula to use when calculating view-through rate.
VTR = (Qualifying Video Views ÷ Total Impressions) × 100
In that case, if your video got 1000 impressions and 250 qualifying views, the VTR would be 250/1000 × 100, which is 25%.
Let's say you’re running a 30-second video ad on a platform where a view is counted when someone watches at least 15 seconds. If the ad receives 1,000 impressions and 250 people watch for at least 15 seconds, your VTR would therefore be 25%.
The 250 people don't necessarily have to watch all 30 seconds for their views to count. They only need to reach the platform's qualifying threshold.
However, when measuring VTR, note that it’s a video engagement metric, not a measure of whether the campaign successfully generated clicks or sales.
You must combine it with other metrics, such as click-through rate, to understand the true performance of your ad.
This would give you a more holistic explanation of your video ad performance.
- Impression: Did the ad get served?
- VTR: Did enough people stop and watch for the view to count?
- CTR: Did they click and visit the landing page?
- CPA/ROAS: Did that attention lead to a valuable outcome?
View-through completion vs. view-through rate
When you’re trying to understand your video ad performance, you may also come across a metric known as view-through completion rate (VTC).
VTC measures the percentage of viewers who started a video and watched it to completion.
While VTR looks at how many impressions resulted in a qualifying video view, VTC looks at what happened after someone started watching.
If 1,000 people start watching your video and 400 of them watch it all the way to the end, your VTC would be:
(400 ÷ 1,000) × 100 = 40%
This tells you that 40% of the people who started watching the video stayed until the end.
So, while VTR can help you understand how well your video gets people to start watching, VTC gives you a better idea of how well the video holds their attention through to the end.
Use VTR to evaluate your video's opening, targeting, or ability to catch attention in a busy feed. But use VTC when you want to see how well your video holds viewers’ attention from start to finish.
How to Improve View-Through Rate
There are several adjustments you can make to improve your view-through rate. Here are the top three to get you started.
1. Generate interest with your hook
You need a visual hook and a text hook or headline.
Adding a headline to videos has been found to result in 37 percent higher completion rates compared with videos without a headline.
That’s because a headline helps confirm whether the video is relevant to your audience. If it is, they’re more likely to stick around and keep watching.
A visual hook does the same job of qualifying whether your video is relevant.
2. Match video content to the audience you're targeting
If you’re advertising press-on nails and targeting people who identify as men, there’s a huge disconnect.
The people seeing your ad are less likely to find the content relevant to them, which means they’re more likely to ignore it.
In such instances, you’ll see a lower VTR because fewer people have a reason to stop and watch.
Audience targeting and video content must make sense together. The person viewing the ad should be able to recognize fairly quickly that the video is relevant to their interests, needs, or situation.
Meta, for instance, uses feedback from how people interact with your ads, including positive and negative feedback, as part of its ad delivery system. If people respond poorly to an ad because it isn't relevant to them, this can affect how Meta delivers the ad.
Getting your audience right isn't only about reaching the right people.
It also affects how those people respond to your video. When the audience, message, and creative work seamlessly, you have a better chance of getting people to stop, watch, and eventually take action.
3. Make your video work without sound
The majority of people scrolling through social media won’t necessarily have their sound on.
According to the latest Facebook video statistics, 85% of Facebook video views occur without sound.
If your video relies entirely on audio to communicate its message, people watching without sound may ignore it before they get the point, which can hurt your view-through rate.
Adding captions makes your video easier to follow, even when someone is watching without sound. It also makes your content more inclusive for people who are deaf or hard of hearing.
Use captions, on-screen text, and visuals to communicate the main point, alongside audio elements.
Final thoughts
To recap, VTR helps you understand how frequently people exposed to a video ad go on to meet the platform's definition of a view.
It’s a useful metric if your goal is to determine whether your videos are relevant and interesting enough to your target audience.
However, VTR cannot tell you whether a video ad will be profitable or lead to the desired action you want viewers to take.
You must measure it in light of other metrics such as VTC, CTR, cost per action, and return on ad spend.
Read our guide to Facebook ad metrics to learn about the other metrics you need to track when evaluating ad performance.
FAQs
What does view-through rate mean?
VTR is the percentage of video ad impressions that can be counted as a qualifying video view, as defined by the ad platform. It helps you see how often people who were shown your ad went on to watch enough of the video for that view to count.
What is the difference between VCR and VTR?
VTR looks at how many impressions resulted in a qualifying video view, while VCR looks at how many viewers watched the video all the way to the end.
How to find view-through rate?
You can calculate VTR by dividing your qualifying video views by total video ad impressions, then multiplying the result by 100.
Does a high view-through rate mean my video ad is performing well?
A high VTR means more people are reaching the platform's qualifying view threshold, but it doesn't tell you if they converted or generated revenue. You need to look at metrics such as CTR, cost per action, and ROAS alongside VTR to understand how the ad is performing overall.
Sources
Damaris is a Digital Marketing Specialist who writes about digital marketing and performance marketing. At Cropink, she creates data-driven content to help businesses run better ad campaigns for better performance and ROI.
Leszek is the Digital Growth Manager at Feedink & Cropink, specializing in organic growth for eCommerce and SaaS companies. His background includes roles at Poland's largest accommodation portal and FT1000 companies, with his work featured in Forbes, Inc., Business Insider, Fast Company, Entrepreneur, BBC, and TechRepublic.
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