Do creative metrics matter?

Thumb stop ratio, CTR, Hold rate...

Hey there! đź‘‹

I hope your Summer is going well and you’re having some time to take your foot off the gas and recharge. I’ve just come back from a week in Ibiza and couldn’t be more recharged!

Things are developing great within the agency and being able to partner up with some amazing brands recently.

This week is kind of a heated subject in DTC Twitter lately, so I wanted to give my take on creative metrics and whether or not you should look at them.

The debate about whether or not creative metrics like CTR, hook- and hold rate, CPC and all the other metrics to presumably tell you how your creatives are performing is heating up lately. Which is why I wanted to give my unsolicited opinion about it as well.

I understand that there are two camps here that both have valid arguments to demonstrate why they are right.

Let’s start off by the side that thinks creative metrics are very important to look at to determine the performance of your creative and how you should use those metrics to look at both performance of the creatives and the overall performance of your store.

I believe they have a valid argument by looking at creatives to find ways to improve them.

Hold rate low? Then you might need to change the middle part of the video or at least strengthen it.

Hook rate low? Improve the first 3-5 seconds of your video to grab the attention better.

Yes we also look at those metrics when performing a creative analysis on a weekly basis for our clients to identify gaps that can be filled to make our creatives perform better.

I think some metrics like hook and hold rate that focus on a specific part of a video do make a lot of sense to look at to identify weak spots in your creatives to make them even better.

But now we are getting to the people that lean more towards throwing out these metrics alone but look at them in conjunction to metrics like CPA and or new customer ROAS which I think is the way to go.

Let’s say you’re getting an amazing CTR but the CPA is way out of target and ROAS is not where you want it to be. Well awesome job at getting good creative metrics but what does that for your bank account or P&L?

Yes, nothing...

I am a firm believer that these “soft creative metrics” should be looked at and reviewed in combination with hard metrics like:

  • (NC)CPA/(NC)ROAS

  • Conversion rate

  • Contribution margin

All day I would take an ad with a low CTR and amazing CPA over an ad with high CTR and bad or mediocre CPA and I think every business owner or marketer should look at the metrics this way.

Now talking about creative testing and iteration based on this subject, I do believe that not all creatives deserve the time and attention marketers might give it.

Why does this creative don’t get spend? Well Facebook doesn’t want to push it as it doesn’t believe it will get you the results you’d like and/or it doesn’t support its goal (keeping users entertained on the platform).

Instead, look for creatives that are either performing but can be improved or creatives that are almost performing at target. This way you allocate your time best towards ads that deserve your attention and the chances of you finding better ads are much higher.

I've been using Foreplay for months now, and I can honestly say it's one of the best value-for-money tools for any eCommerce brand, agency owner or anyone that runs paid media.

It allows you to save ads from TikTok's and Facebook's ads library and keep them forever in your inspiration boards!

That's a wrap!

See you next week at 7 PM CEST.

All the best,

Dennis đź’š

P.S. On Twitter? Follow me here for daily value bombs about eCommerce and DTC!