Creative
Hook Rate
The percentage of viewers who watch past the first 3 seconds of a video ad. The single most important leading indicator of video creative quality. If people aren't stopping to watch, nothing else matters - your message, offer, and CTA are irrelevant. Benchmark hook rates vary by platform: TikTok generally runs higher than Meta feed, with YouTube pre-roll lower still. Improving hook rate is usually the highest-leverage creative optimization you can make.
Why it matters
It is the earliest read on creative quality, available within hours rather than after a conversion window, which makes it the fastest kill signal.
In practice
Judge it against your own library rather than a published benchmark. The threshold that matters is whether this ad beats your median, not whether it beats an industry number.
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