Hook rate
Hook rate is how often people keep watching after the first few seconds of a video ad. If 100 people are shown the video and 15 of them are still watching at three seconds, hook rate is 15 percent. It tells you if the opening worked, before anyone clicks.
Theodor Lindfors, Founding Marketer ·
Formula
Hook rate ≈ 3-second views / video impressions (platform-dependent)
How to calculate hook rate
A common version of hook rate is 3-second views divided by video impressions. An impression is one time the video was shown. Platforms will not share a column name. Compare ads in the same placement.
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. The drink brand runs a 15-second Instagram video of a 58-year-old runner opening a can after a long walk. The ad is shown 10,000 times. 1,500 people are still watching at three seconds. 1,500 ÷ 10,000 = 0.15, which we write as a 15% hook rate. A talking-head version of the same offer, shown in the same feed, holds only 800 people to three seconds (8%). The opening is the difference, not the drink.
A 6-second bumper and a 30-second story ad are not the same hook-rate test. Meta (Facebook and Instagram), TikTok, and YouTube will name the seconds differently. Stay inside one placement when you pick a winner.
Why hook rate matters
Most video ads lose people before the offer. 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. If the drink brand's first seconds do not hold, CTR (click-through rate: how often a view becomes a click) and conversion rate never get a fair test. Creative teams use hook rate to judge openings. Media teams use it to decide what to iterate this week.
A weak hook wastes the rest of the production. 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. The drink brand paid for 15 seconds. The feed (the scrolling list of posts) gave the viewer two. The opening is the only part most people will see, so it is the part worth measuring first.
How to read hook rate
Platforms name hook rate differently (3-second views, thru-plays, hold rate). Compare ads in the same place. Pair hook rate with creative fatigue (has this opening gone stale?). 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. The drink brand's runner video can start at 15% hook rate and slide toward 8% as the same women see the same first frame again.
A high hook rate with a weak click-through rate (CTR: how often a view becomes a click) means people stayed and still did not click. The opening worked. The offer, the next seconds, or the shop page did not. That is a different fix from a dead first frame.
Common hook-rate mistakes
- Fixing only the first frame of the runner video and ignoring that the next five seconds drop off a cliff. 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. A strong can-open still fails if the next line is a wall of talk.
- Averaging hook rate across placements with different autoplay behaviour. Feed, stories, and YouTube in-stream are different tests.
Lemonado
How Lemonado helps with hook rate
Lemonado gives every video ad a hook score and puts it next to fatigue and spend, across the platforms you buy on. You see which openings actually stop the scroll, then make more of those.
Creatives is the workspace for that job: one set of scores, every platform, so the next version is based on the opening that worked.