Metrics
Retention
Also called: audience retention, watch-through rate
The share of a video viewers actually watch — the metric short-form algorithms reward most.
Retention measures how much of a video the average viewer watches before dropping off, usually shown as a curve from 0–100%. It is the signal TikTok, Reels, and Shorts lean on hardest: a clip that holds attention gets pushed to more people, while one that loses viewers early stalls.
Retention is won at the hook and held through pacing — tight cuts, captions, b-roll, and removing dead air. When you study a retention graph, every steep drop marks a moment to cut tighter or rewrite, and every flat stretch is a pattern worth repeating.