Video Comp.
How many of the people shown your video stayed to the end of it.
What it means
Video Comp. is the share of impressions where the video played through to the end. The denominator is impressions — the same one ThumbstopThumbstopThumbstop rate. Use it to judge how strong the first seconds of your video are at stopping the scroll uses — so it's measured against everyone the ad was shown to, not against the people who chose to watch. That makes it a small number by design, and it will sit below your Thumbstop.
Show the math
Formula and a worked example
Video Comp. = plays that reached the end of the video ÷ impressions, as a percentage. A play counts once it's watched through to 95%, so the last second or two of credits doesn't cost you the completion.
Worked example. A 30-second video buys 100,000 impressions for €3,000. 12,000 plays reach 3 seconds and 3,000 reach the end. Thumbstop is 12%, Video Comp. is 3,000 ÷ 100,000 = 3%. Of the 12,000 who stopped, 1 in 4 stayed.
Cut the same story to 15 seconds and more of the same audience reaches the end. You asked for less attention, and more people got to the part with the offer in it.
It answers the question
Did the middle of the edit hold anyone? A low rate against a healthy Thumbstop means people stopped, watched, and left before you made your case.
Why it matters
The offer usually lives at the end. The price, the guarantee, the call to action — all of it only reaches the people counted in this column, so a long video with a low completion is a pitch most of your budget never delivered.
It also tells you what to change. A hook problem and a body problem look identical in your purchase numbers and completely different here, and they need opposite fixes: one is a new opening, the other is a shorter middle.
What good looks like
There's no standard rate, because completion falls away with length — a 10-second cut and a 60-second one can't be judged on the same line. Group your videos by rough length, compare inside each group, and follow your own trend over the last quarter. The test that matters is whether a new edit beats the one it replaced, not whether it clears somebody else's number.
How to improve it
| Lever | What you do | Expect | How long | Watch out for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fast Cut the video shorter | Take a 30-second edit to 15 by deleting setup, not by speeding it up | Video Comp. up sharply | 2–4 days | Less room for the pitch. A shorter cut can raise completion and lower purchases if the reason to buy went in the bin with the setup. |
| Fast Move the offer forward | Put the price, the guarantee or the discount at second 5 instead of the final frame | Purchases up even where Video Comp. doesn't move | 3–5 days | Giving the offer away early removes the reason to keep watching, so this column can fall while the ad performs better. |
| Slow Rewrite the part where they leave | Find the drop-off point in Meta's retention curve and replace those seconds, keeping the rest | Video Comp. up 1–3 points | 2–4 weeks | Editing time, and the re-upload restarts learning — you lose the delivery history of an ad that was already established. |
| Slow Cut a version per placement | A short vertical edit for Reels and Stories, the longer one for Feed | Video Comp. structurally higher | 1 quarter | Production cost multiplies per format, and more ads in the account means budget splits further so each one learns slower. |
Every lever costs something somewhere. The last column is the one to read twice.
Read it with
Completion alone tells you people watched. Next to the click rate, it tells you whether watching led anywhere.
Watched it and went
People stayed to the end and acted on it. The edit and the ask are both doing their job.
Entertaining, not selling
They watched it out and did nothing. Usually a beautiful brand film with no reason to click at the end of it.
They left to buy
People clicked before the end, which is why completion looks weak. A low rate isn't a fault when the traffic is there.
Lost in the middle
Nobody finishes and nobody clicks. If Thumbstop is healthy the body is the problem; if it isn't, the concept is.
Same denominator, opposite ends of the video, so the gap between them measures exactly where the edit lost people. 12% stopping and 3% finishing means a quarter of the people who stopped made it through; 12% and 8% means two thirds did, so the body is unusually strong and the concept deserves more budget.
This finds the money going into videos nobody sits through. Sort by Spend, descending, then read across — a top-spending ad with completion well under the rest of the table is paying full price to deliver half a message.
Common misreads
The denominator is impressions, the same as Thumbstop, and most of that denominator never watched a second. To get completions as a share of people who actually started, compare this column against Thumbstop rather than reading it alone.
On a 45-second video shown 100,000 times, 3% is 3,000 people who watched the whole thing. Length drags this number down mechanically. Judge it against videos of a similar length, never against a short cut.
Completion measures patience, not intent. A slow, good-looking brand film holds people to the end and asks them for nothing. Check the click rate and purchases before you scale on this column.
Also called
Video completion rate · completion rate · watch-through rate · VTR
See yoursYour Video Comp. by creative, next to Thumbstop and the Spend behind each video.
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