12 Facebook video metrics brands need to benchmark right now

Ever wondered if people loved watching your Facebook videos? How many of them skipped your Story videos? Did they even watch it until the end?

These are all great questions to ask when you’re using videos for your Facebook marketing strategy. And your Facebook video metrics can give you the answers you need.

Understanding your Facebook video metrics will help you get a better sense of how well people are responding to your content. It lets you measure the results of your campaign and understand how well your investment is paying off. You can also use these insights to increase analytics like reach, engagement and ROI of your next video.

So what are the video metrics you need to track on Facebook? In this post we’ll give you a breakdown of the most important metrics you should measure for your brand.

How to find Facebook video metrics

There are a few ways you can access the Facebook video metrics of your organic posts.

To view the individual post performance of each video, click on one of the metrics visible under each post. This will open a more detailed view of all the metrics associated with the video.

Another option is to view these metrics from your video library. Click on the “More” button at the top of your page and select “Videos.” From here, you can see all the videos you’ve posted and easily select the one you want to analyze.

You can see your most popular video highlighted at the top of the page. Scroll down to see all the videos you’ve posted. Once you’ve found the video you want to analyze, click on the “…” button below the video. Then select “View insights” to open up the detailed metrics page.

Additionally, your Page Insights will give you access to other Facebook video metrics such as Facebook Story metrics and Facebook Live metrics. All of your video ad metrics are accessible from the Facebook Ads Manager.

What are good video metrics to track on Facebook?

When it comes to your Facebook video performance, there are no set standards you have to meet. What counts as “good” may vary depending on your industry, your following size and your past video performance. For example, a view count of 1,000 may be low for a brand with 10,000 followers. But it’s a good number for a brand with 2,000 followers.

Ideally, you should use your own data as Facebook video benchmarks so you can compare how your performance changes over time.

1. Video views

This metric tells you the total number of times people watched your video. Your Facebook video view count gives you an accurate picture of how your video performed because it goes beyond reach. That means it doesn’t only show you how many users saw your video in their Feeds but how many of those people actually watched the video.

Keep in mind that this Facebook video metric considers all video views–even ones that lasted for just a few seconds. So it doesn’t give you a full picture of your video performance. But it gives you a Facebook video view rate benchmark that you can use in your campaign measurement.

Does rewatching a Facebook video count as a view?

To avoid skewing the data, Facebook only considers unrepeated seconds watched as a view count. That means even if someone rewatches the video, Facebook will only count it as one view.

2. Engagement

Engagement is an important metric to track for all types of Facebook videos, including in-feed videos, Stories and Live. It measures how often people interacted with your video through likes, comments and shares.

In the case of Facebook Stories, the native analytics tool looks at all the engagement data over the past 28 days. It counts engagement actions like reactions, sticker interactions, swipe-up actions, profile taps, replies and shares.

This helps you understand how much the content resonated with your audience. Which types of videos see the most engagement? As such, engagement data can serve as Facebook video benchmarks to inform your video content strategy.

3. Audience retention

This Facebook video metric shows you when viewers start to drop off when watching your video. So you can get an accurate reading of how well you managed to retain viewers who actively watched your videos. And you can even pinpoint which sections of the video might have potentially caused them to disengage.

4. Negative feedback

Are people responding negatively to your video? Negative feedback involves hiding your post, reporting it as spam or unliking your Page. This is a crucial metric to track because it helps you identify problematic content that’s losing you fan’s attention.

In many cases, videos with tons of negative feedback may even put your social media reputation at risk. So it’s important to quickly review them and get to the root of the problem.

5. Top location and top audience

Viewer demographics information like top location and top audience can help you learn more about your target audience. These metrics give you an idea of the types of people you should target. And they inform how you should tailor your messaging and marketing approach.

6. Swipe-up actions

This metric is specific to Facebook Stories. Swipe-up actions show you how many times people took action from your Stories by swiping up on a link or action button. For example, people may swipe up to “Shop Now.” It’s a useful metric for understanding how impactful your Stories are and how effectively they drive conversions.

7. Saves

Another Story-specific metric to track are Saves which are measured by the total number of people who saved your Story video to their Facebook collection. It’s a good indicator of how much value your Stories are adding to your audience.

8. Peak live viewers

This metric is specific to Facebook Live and shows you the most viewers you had while your video was live. You can expand on this metric to see a graph of how this viewer count changes throughout the live broadcast. So it gives you a clear idea of when viewers start to drop off.

This data can help you find out if viewers are getting restless during a broadcast that’s taking too long. Or it could be a sign that you need to make some changes to your broadcast timing so more people can tune in for the whole thing. It could also be an indicator of the content quality itself.

9. Average completion rate

Closely related to the previous metric, the average completion rate helps you understand how many people watched your live video until the end. A low average completion rate suggests that your live broadcasts may not be engaging or well-executed enough. Or you may have broadcasted at a time when people were too busy to watch the entire thing.

You’ll need to find out the specific reason for this low completion rate and experiment with tips to make your live broadcasts more engaging.

10. Page growth

As you create more engaging video content, you’ll gradually see a growth in your fan following. Make sure you’re using Facebook video benchmarks to understand how your content is impacting your page likes.

Facebook also gives you the option to measure page growth so you can see how many followers you gained after a live video session. This is a helpful metric for understanding the impact of your live broadcasts so you know what’s working and what gets people to “like” your page.

11. Ad engagements

If you’re running Facebook video ad campaigns, you should also keep a close eye on your ad engagement metrics. How are people responding to your video ads? This is an important question to ask if you want to maximize the impact of your ads and get more out of your investment.

How much time are they spending watching your video ads? And how many times have people messaged your business after viewing your ads? You can view these crucial video ad metrics using the Ads Manager.

To get a more detailed breakdown of your video ad engagements, you can also use the Sprout Social Facebook Paid Performance Report. This gives you an overview of how much engagement your ads received. Plus, you can also view the number of clicks and web conversions generated from your ads. So you can use this data to get a better understanding of your campaign performance and look for opportunities to optimize your Facebook video ads.

12. Ad cost (CPM, CPE, CPC, CPCon)

Additionally, you should also be measuring how much you’re spending on your Facebook video ads. The Facebook Paid Performance Report gives you a detailed breakdown of your ad spend. It shows you how much you’re spending on your ads in relation to different performance metrics.

For example, you can see the cost per impression, cost per engagement, cost per click and cost per web conversion. These are all necessary metrics to gain a fuller picture of your advertising spend and eventually, your overall campaign performance.

Start tracking and growing with Facebook videos

As brands strive to stand out from the competition, video marketing is only going to grow in popularity. Marketers are seeing great value from using videos on Facebook. According to Sprout Social’s Index Edition XVII: Accelerate, 54% of marketers agree that video is the most valuable content type for achieving their social media goals.

If you’re going to get more out of your Facebook video marketing efforts, you can’t afford to miss out on all the crucial performance insights. So make sure you’re regularly tracking your performance using the key Facebook video metrics we shared above.

And if you want to learn more about the impact of videos, Facebook and everything in between, download The Sprout Social Index report.