Hook Rate
Paid MediaAlso: 3-Second View Rate · Thumb-Stop Rate
Quick definition
Hook rate is the percentage of people who keep watching a video ad past the first few seconds, usually three, instead of scrolling past. It measures whether the opening of your ad earns attention before the platform or the viewer moves on.
How it varies across Australia
Hook rate varies widely by placement and format. Feed video on social platforms tends to sit lower than in-stream formats where the viewer has already committed to watching content. User-generated style creative typically holds attention longer in the opening seconds than polished brand video.
Explore paid media benchmarks across Australian industries →What it actually means
Scrolling through a social feed is like flicking through radio stations. Most stations get skipped in under a second. Hook rate measures how many people paused on your station instead of flicking past it.
It's calculated from the platform's own view data, typically three-second video views divided by impressions. A high hook rate means your opening frame, sound or motion did its job of interrupting the scroll. A low one means the ad is invisible before the message even starts.
The trap is treating hook rate as a proxy for ad quality. It isn't. It measures the first three seconds only. An ad can hook brilliantly and still convert nobody, because the offer, the click-through rate (CTR) and the landing page all sit downstream of the hook. Hook rate is a creative diagnostic, not a performance verdict.
It matters most when you're running several creative variants and need to know which one earns attention before you spend budget optimising the rest of the funnel. Pair it with completion rate and CTR to see where in the video people actually drop off, and pair both with cost per acquisition (CPA) or ROAS to see if attention converts into anything that pays.
Hook rate measures whether someone stopped scrolling. It says nothing about whether they bought anything once they stopped.
How to calculate it
Hook Rate = 3-second video views ÷ Total impressions
Worked example. Your video ad received 50,000 impressions and 15,000 people watched past the three-second mark. Hook rate = 15,000 ÷ 50,000 = 30%.
The Australian context
Australian advertisers running video on Meta and TikTok often benchmark against US case studies, which skews expectations. Smaller local audiences and less saturated feeds in some categories mean Australian hook rates can run higher on the same creative simply because there's less competing content in the auction. Don't assume a lower number means worse creative until you've checked the category norm.
Where people get this wrong
Related terms
Common questions
What is a good hook rate for social video ads?
It depends heavily on platform and placement, so there's no single universal number. Judge it against your own historical creative rather than an external benchmark, and treat sudden drops as a signal your opening frame needs work.
Does a high hook rate mean the ad will convert well?
Not necessarily. Hook rate only measures whether people kept watching past the opening. Conversion depends on the offer, the landing page and audience targeting, all of which sit well beyond the first three seconds.
How is hook rate different from completion rate?
Hook rate measures the very start of the video, usually the first three seconds. Completion rate measures how many viewers watched the whole thing. A video can hook well and still lose most viewers before the end.
Which platforms report hook rate directly?
Meta and TikTok both surface three-second video view metrics in their ads managers, which is where hook rate is usually calculated from. YouTube reports similar early-view data but under different metric names.
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About New Rebellion
New Rebellion is a marketing intelligence consultancy. We build tools, score Australian businesses on how their marketing actually performs, and publish Debrief every day. This dictionary is part of how we work in the open.
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