Study reveals completion rates for online video

In their analysis of 12.4 million video plays across 60 countries, Coull found that videos featuring cars and animals enjoy a far higher completion rate than music. While 61% of viewers watched videos featuring cars watched to the end and 49% watched videos featuring animals to completion, music-related videos only kept one in three watching.

Other video themes that also kept viewers engaged were people and blogs (52%) and travel and events (51%) while sport and politics were not as effective with just a 43% completion rate.

Viewers in the U.S. and South Africa were found to be the most engaged with almost half of all online videos watched through to the end. In Britain, 41% of videos were viewed to completion, far more than in Russia (18%) and Japan (20%).

According to Irfon Watkins, CEO at Coull, completion rates are an important measurement tool.

"Strong completion rates show engagement," says Irfon. "If publishers can identify their most valuable inventory and make it available via new ad formats with contextual content-level targeting, they'll be able to provide a highly effective advertising model for brands while increasing their own revenue simply through more effective monetization of existing inventory."

Image via Shutterstock

Tags: engagement, metrics, online video