Understanding ad performance metrics
When it comes to ad performance, you want different hypotheses about what's working so you can replicate that success. Here are the key metrics for both Meta and TikTok that will help you understand every stage of ad performance.
The jobs-to-be-done framework
1. Capturing attention
The goal: Hook people in to start watching your content (3 seconds for Meta, 2 seconds for TikTok).
Key metrics:
1st frame retention - Shows who actually started playing your ad. Low retention? Swap out that first frame.
Thumbstop - Measures if you captured attention for 3 seconds. Pull all your videos into a report and check your average at the bottom of the table chart—this gives you a benchmark to see which ads are above or below average.
2. Holding attention
The goal: Keep people watching and share the information they need about your product.
Key metrics:
Thruplay - Who stayed to at least 15 seconds of your ad.
15s/3s video retention - Of the people who watched 3 seconds, who stayed to 15 seconds.
100% video plays (rate) - Useful for longer ads to see who watches to the end.
Video avg play time - Shows how far people typically get into your video.
Important: Low hold attention isn't always bad. If you have a compelling hook or promo in the first 3-5 seconds, people might click through immediately without watching the whole ad. That's okay!
3. Getting people to your site
The goal: Drive clicks to your landing page.
Key metrics:
Click-through rate ( CTR (all) ) - General clicks, including likes, shares, and comments.
CTR (outbound) - Specific clicks to your landing page. (Note: Some ad types like dynamic creatives require you to use link click instead.)
Thumbstop click rate - Of the people who watched 3+ seconds, who clicked through.
4. Driving engagement on your site
The goal: Understand user behavior once they land on your site.
Key metrics:
Click to add-to-cart ratio vs. Click to purchase - Compare these side by side. High add to cart but low purchase could indicate issues like high shipping costs.
Bounce rate & Time on site - Available through Google Analytics.
5. Winning the purchase or desired action
The goal: Convert visitors into customers (or leads, app installs, etc.).
Key metrics:
Click to purchase/lead/install - Your most important metric showing if people complete the desired action.
Average order value (AOV) - Shows order size trends.
Using Motion metrics
Motion Metrics combine these metrics into scores from 0-100 for each stage:
Hook Score - How well your video hooked people in
Watch Score - How well you got people to watch
Click Score - How well you got people to click
Conversion Score - How well you got people to convert
Note: Dashes appear when spend is below $50 or for images (since we can't measure hook/watch scores for static content).
Putting it all together
Look for themes among high-performing ads. What messaging works in ads with great hook scores? What about watch scores? Use these insights to develop hypotheses you can test and replicate in future campaigns.
Hop over to our next lesson on Sharing Insights Outside of Motion.
Resources:
Access our Metrics Cheat Sheet here! (Select File > Make a Copy for your own use)