Watch-through
The share of a video the average viewer actually watched.
Watch-through is how far into a video people get, expressed as a proportion of its length. Fifty percent watch-through on a two-minute video means the average viewer left around the one-minute mark.
It's the most honest single number in video, because it's very hard to game and it tracks something real: whether the thing held attention. Views measure distribution. Watch-through measures the content.
Length confounds it badly. A short video will almost always post a higher watch-through than a long one, so the figure is only comparable between videos of similar duration. Comparing a thirty-second cut-down to a twelve-minute feature on watch-through tells you about the durations, not the films.
Where this comes up
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