Facebook Upgrades Video Metrics To Track Duration Of Views & Audience Retention

Aiming to give page owners and advertisers a better read on how videos are resonating with customers, Facebook is upgrading its video metrics offerings.

Currently, Facebook shows you only how many people started watching a video. When the upgrade rolls out in the “coming weeks,” Facebook said, you’ll be served information on video views, unique video views, the average duration of the video view and audience retention.

As part of the change Facebook has redefined what it considers a video view — a view of three seconds or more, including the videos that auto-play as users scroll through their News Feeds.

The audience retention graph should be especially interesting:

Spikes in the percentage of views at a certain point may indicate that people are re-watching particular moments, whereas a dip could show the precise moment when most people lost interest and stopped watching.

Clearly, the metric upgrade is intended to encourage page owners to do more of their video work on the Facebook platform. With one exception, the new features will only be available on videos uploaded directly to pages. That exception is the click-to-play metric that will also show clicks to play on third-party videos, like YouTube and Vimeo, that play in-line on Facebook.

The changes will be available on both organic and paid videos, but Ads Reporting will offer a more detailed breakdown and demographic information.