Hold rate
Hold rate is the share of people who keep watching a video ad after the opening. The usual version is ThruPlays (plays of 15 seconds or more) divided by 3-second plays. If 1,000 people watch the first three seconds and 300 make it to fifteen, hold rate is 30 percent. Hook rate tells you if the start worked. Hold rate tells you if the rest did.
Theodor Lindfors, Founding Marketer ·
Formula
Hold rate = ThruPlays / 3-second video plays
How to calculate hold rate
The common version is ThruPlays divided by 3-second video plays. A ThruPlay is a play of at least 15 seconds, or the whole video if it is shorter. A 3-second play is everyone who got past the opening. Some teams divide 15-second views by 3-second views instead, or use full plays. Pick one and keep it.
Let's take a drink brand as an example. They sell a low-sugar sports drink for active women over 50, mostly from their own website. Their 30-second runner video is shown 10,000 times. 1,500 people watch three seconds, so hook rate is 15%. 450 of them reach fifteen seconds. 450 / 1,500 = 30% hold rate.
Watch out for one trap. Dividing ThruPlays by impressions gives a much smaller number (450 / 10,000 = 4.5%) that mixes the hook and the hold into one figure. It is a different metric, so don't compare it with a hold rate built on 3-second plays.
Hook rate vs hold rate
The two numbers split a video ad in half. Hook rate is the opening. Hold rate is everything after it. Reading them together tells you where the ad loses people.
The drink brand also runs a talking-head version of the same offer. Its hook rate is only 8% (800 three-second plays on 10,000 impressions), but 320 of those 800 reach fifteen seconds, a 40% hold rate. The runner video wins the scroll. The talking head wins the story. The next version to test is the runner's first frame on the talking head's script.
- Strong hook, weak hold: the first frame works and the middle drags. Cut or reorder the middle.
- Weak hook, strong hold: the people who stay are interested. Fix the opening, keep the rest.
- Both weak: the idea is not landing. Test a new angle, not a new edit.
How to read hold rate
Compare ads of a similar length in the same placement. A 15-second ad and a 60-second ad are not the same test, and feed, stories and in-stream behave differently. Read hold rate next to CTR (click-through rate: how often a view becomes a click): people who stay and still don't click are telling you the offer or the ending needs work.
Track it over time on the same ad. When hold rate slides while spend stays flat, the same people have seen the story before. That is creative fatigue, and the fix is a new version, not a bigger budget.
Lemonado
How Lemonado helps with hold rate
Lemonado puts hook and hold next to spend and fatigue on every video ad, across the platforms you buy on. You see whether an ad loses people at the first frame or in the middle, so you fix the right part.
Ask which ads have a strong hook but a weak hold this week and you get the list of ads, not an account average.