Video has so much data for marketers, it can actually be used to help shape your digital marketing strategy. More and more marketers are recognizing how valuable video data can be when used to find the right messaging and distribution strategy.

“There’s a lot of data that we have access to that we couldn’t really see very easily [before measuring video]. It’s helped us to change the format of our videos and we use that to determine which topics we talk about, which of the key spokespeople perform well, what channels are driving traffic. It’s just giving us a lot more insight than we had before,” said Michelle Williams, Digital Marketing Manager at Bird & Bird.

In this blog, we’ll break down which metrics are the best to look at when using video to help shape your digital strategy. Unlike other metrics, like impressions, CTRs, time-on-page, and other website/social metrics, video can specifically tell a marketer what is being watched, when, and by whom. When properly measured,, this data will reveal which topics, spokespeople, and content perform best for a brand. 

Which Video Marketing Metrics Matter to a Digital Strategy?

1. Video Engagement

Video engagement is one of the most important metrics for marketers to reveal if the video content you’re producing is actually resonating. By looking at engagement, or in other words, the average play time of a video, one can see if the content is being consumed at a high rate. The topics and spokespeople in these videos can also be quantified to see where and when they are most engaging.

Heat maps reveal if someone rewinds or rewatches certain sections of the video, allowing a marketer to gain insight into where specifically a topic is most engaging. These heat maps can also give insight into where a topic is particularly interesting and when viewers lose interest. Here’s an example of what a heat map could look like for a video:

The darker shade of green indicates where the video has been watched multiple times. This insight reveals what specific section is of particular interest to our viewers, and therefore something you may want to distribution further, or incorporate in other campaigns across other mediums like blogs, social media or on your website.

2. Video Conversions

The next step in video metrics is to start converting your audience with your video content. By adding a collector form at the beginning, middle, or end of a video, viewers who actively want more information can request it simply by providing their details in the form. This is an easy win for marketers, who can give those who want more information an easy way to request it - thereby generating leads that they otherwise wouldn't be able to generate without the option of a collector form embedded into the video itself. 

“Now we can actually measure and lead score on engagement, and we can capture the contact details from video viewers. Within that first month, we saw that 50% of all contacts generated came from TwentyThree,” said Christian Johansen, Digital Marketing Specialist at Universal Robots.

In this example from Universal Robots, they chose to place their collector form at the end of their videos, to enable those those interested in subscribing to their content, an easy opportunity to do so:

Collectors are a great way to determine if a video is effective in generating interest with your target market. Whether that collector is at the beginning or end of a video, it’s important to have the option for your audience to subscribe to your content. Not only is this an indication that you have a high engagement rate, but if the collector is available at the end of your video, that is an indicator that the lead is of high quality - because they would have watched your entire video, and are definitely worth reaching out to.

3. Play Rate

The video play rate is an indicator of the effectiveness of your headlines and topics in resonating with your target market. Essentially, a play rate is impressions divided by actual plays of a video.

By measuring this metric, marketers can see which aspects of a video (headline, thumbnail, tagline, etc.) motivates the viewer to take action. By A/B testing varying aspects, and then analyzing the play rates of the different videos, marketers can get a good idea of what combination of video and content resonates best with their target audience. Play rate can also guide other marketing strategies, such as which keywords and imagery work best to capture attention and stop the scroll on social media feeds.

4. Webinars

We’ve said it many, many times, but it’s worth repeating: webinars are video content. Whether it’s a presentation with audio, a live event with people on camera, or an online Q & A, webinars provide a tremendous amount of video metrics that marketers can analyze to shape some of their digital strategy. The benefit of webinars is that they are run live but can also be provided on-demand to create even more distribution options (and therefore possible lead generation opportunities) of this valuable content.

Webinars tell a marketer the engagement, conversions, and play rate of long-form content. Webinar insights can indicate the effectiveness of the topics covered and where there is an opportunity to repurpose popular content into blogs, eBooks, and social snippets. Below is an example of some of the data that live and on-demand webinars can provide to show marketers how their audience moves down the funnel:

Whether it’s engagement, conversions, play-rates, or webinars, all of these video metrics can be used to help shape the marketing strategy of any organization. By incorporating these insights into a digital strategy and constantly optimizing video content, it's possible to generate more leads of increasingly quality, assisting marketing teams in achieving their overall business objectives.