Video Funnel Economics Planner
Video is a funnel, and the first three seconds gate the whole thing. Set your impressions, hook rate, hold rate, and action rate, and this planner turns them into qualified views, the true cost per completed view, cost per action, and the one stage where your funnel is leaking the most.
A raw view count hides where the money goes. This planner walks impressions down through the hook (watch past three seconds), the hold (watch-through), and the action, so you see how many genuine viewers you buy, what each completed view and each action actually costs, and which stage is bleeding the most against benchmark. Change any input and the whole funnel — and its economics — recompute live.
Video funnel inputs and results
How to use this planner
- Enter impressions and CPM. How many times the video is served, and what a thousand impressions cost on your surface.
- Set the hook rate. The share that watches past three seconds — the gate on the whole funnel.
- Set the hold rate. Of those hooked, the share that watches through to a qualified view.
- Set the action rate. Of qualified viewers, the share that clicks, visits, or buys.
- Read the economics and the leak. Qualified views, cost per completed view, cost per action, and the stage draining the most against benchmark.
Optimize the gate, not the button
Most teams pour energy into the bottom of the video funnel — a punchier call-to-action, a new end card — and wonder why nothing moves. The math explains it. The action rate only touches the sliver of people who already watched through. The hook rate sits at the very top, so a gain there multiplies down every stage beneath it. Raise the hook from 15% to 25% and you have not improved one number; you have made the entire funnel about two-thirds bigger, for free. When you model your own funnel above, look at which stage is furthest below benchmark — and start there, top-down.
How it works
The planner walks a simple multiplicative funnel and prices each surviving stage against total spend.
The leak diagnosis compares each stage rate to a working benchmark — hook 20%, hold 40%, action 5% — and flags the stage furthest below its benchmark. Benchmarks are illustrative starting points (RGM analysis); your own accounts are the real benchmark. Because required outcomes scale multiplicatively, a fix at the top of the funnel returns more than the same fix at the bottom.
Video is unusual because the same creative pays back differently at each stage. Upper-funnel views are cheap but convert slowly; a mid-funnel view from someone who already watched half of an earlier ad costs more per impression yet clears a far higher rate, so model each stage on its own CPM and view-through rate rather than one blended number — a blend hides where the money actually leaks. Incrementality matters more here than in most channels: platform-reported view-through conversions overstate causal lift, so treat them as directional and confirm with a hold-out test before you scale spend. As a planning anchor, RGM analysis assumes a mid-teens to low-thirties two-second view rate and single-digit view-through conversion on cold audiences; replace both the moment you have thirty days of your own data, because completion rate and audience quality move these numbers more than any bid change you can make. When in doubt, plan against the more conservative of your last two comparable campaigns and revise upward only after the data earns it.
Rough video benchmarks
| Stage / metric | Working benchmark | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Hook rate (social, 3s) | ~15–30% | Directional; surface- and creative-dependent. |
| YouTube view rate (skippable) | ~31.9% | Average TrueView view rate (Strike Social, via Store Growers). |
| CTV completion rate | ~90–96% | Unskippable big-screen (Innovid CTV data, via Store Growers). |
| Cost per view (skippable YouTube) | ~$0.05 | Skippable in-stream (AdConversion, via Store Growers). |
Figures are industry medians for general benchmarking, not guarantees; your surface, geography, and auction differ. See the full sourcing on the video marketing field guide.
Go deeper
A million impressions, two futures
Say you run 1,000,000 impressions of a skippable YouTube cut at a $12 CPM — a total spend of $12,000. With a weak 12% hook, a 40% hold, and a 5% action rate, you buy 120,000 hooked views, 48,000 completed views, and about 2,400 actions. That is a cost per completed view near $0.25 and a cost per action around $5.00.
Now change one number. Lift the hook from 12% to 24% and hold everything else steady. Hooked views double to 240,000, completed views double to 96,000, and actions double to about 4,800. Cost per completed view halves to roughly $0.12, and cost per action falls to about $2.50 — on the same budget and the same offer. That is the whole argument for spending your best hour on the first three seconds: the gain at the top of the funnel is inherited by every stage beneath it. A better end card could never do that, because it only ever touches the few who already watched. Model your own numbers above and watch the same leverage play out.
Common questions
What is a video funnel?
A video funnel is the sequence a viewer moves through: impressions served, hooked views that clear the three-second gate, held or completed views that watch through, and actions such as a click, visit, or purchase. Each stage passes only a fraction of the stage above it, so the funnel multiplies.
What is hook rate?
Hook rate is the share of impressions that keep watching past about three seconds. It sits at the top of the video funnel, so it multiplies every stage below it. Doubling the hook rate roughly doubles qualified views and actions if the lower rates hold.
What is cost per completed view?
Cost per completed view is total spend divided by the number of held or watched-through views. It tells you what a genuinely-watched view costs, which is far more honest than cost per impression or cost per raw view that includes people who scrolled past.
How do I find where my video funnel leaks?
Compare each stage rate — hook, hold, and action — against a benchmark. The stage furthest below its benchmark is your biggest leak. Fixing the top of the funnel usually returns the most, because every stage beneath it inherits the improvement.
What is a good hook rate for video ads?
It varies by surface, but a rough working benchmark is around 15 to 30 percent of impressions watching past three seconds on social feeds, higher on unskippable connected TV. Treat these as directional; your own accounts are the real benchmark.
Should I optimize hook rate or action rate first?
Usually hook rate. Because it sits at the top of the funnel, a gain there multiplies through hold and action. A better call-to-action only improves the small slice that already watched, while a better hook enlarges every slice beneath it.