what's a good audience retention rate to go for 70% that's what you need if it's below that figure out how to get higher 70% do even the best creators get those kind of [Music] numbers well they do here's an audence retention graph from one of Mr BEAST's video and one from Logan Paul's video now there are two things to notice here one overall both the creators were able to get a retention rate between 60 to 80% two if you notice a 30second mark both the creat were able to retain 75 to 85% of Their audience
within the first 30 seconds which is phenomenal so I decided to watch hours of their content and connect the dots between viewer psychology Creator tactics and the evolution of Hollywood films and in this video I'll talk about one why do viewers drop off two what do top creators do to keep their viewers hooked and three why do those retention tactics actually work what's the science behind them for those who are new to the world of content audence retention explains how well was your video able to retain the attention of the viewers during the course of
the video for example a 10-minute video with a 60% audience retention rate means that typically a viewer was watching that video for about 6 minutes now that we have the basics out of the way let's jump to why audience retention as a metric is so important audience retention combined with the click-through rate has an impact on how many views your video will be getting there are other factors as well but as Mr Beast explains it in this video I think YouTube just wants people to click on a video and watch it to me what's important
is Click theate getting people to click on your video and then average view duration average view percentage or just relative retention and you know having them watch it in this clip getting clicks refers to getting a good clickthrough rate on your title and your thumbnail and the second Factor about views talks about increasing your watch time both factors combined it signals the algorithm that this video is worth promoting to a bigger audience so what really makes makes viewers drop off from a video to understand this we need to think about the viewer's journey no matter
where the viewer gets exposed to the title or the thumbnail of your video the purpose of these two elements Remains the Same which is to make a promise and that promise sets an expected payoff in the minds of the viewers if you think in terms of a graph as long as the expected payoff value is high that is close to one the viewers will continue to watch the video the moment the tune out or start doubting the expected value of the video they drop off so as creators our goal is to proactively address those doubts
so the million-dollar question is what are those doubts and when do they kick in so the first doubt kicks in almost right after the viewer clicks on the video is the video about what I think it is to tackle this doubt the top creators rely on a couple of tactics the first tactic is to maintain visual consistency between the thumbnail and the first 5 Seconds of the video to see this in action let's jump to YouTube's homepage and take a look at one of Mr BEAST's video if you notice what Mr Beast does here is
that the first 5 Seconds of the video literally open up from the thumbnail itself thanks to YouTube's Sleek ux the viewer is able to get a sneak peek of the video without even clicking on it or even hearing any of the audio this convinces the viewer that the title or the thumbnail is not a clickbait and the video is exactly what they think it is about the consistency across these three elements that is the title the thumbnail and the first 5 Seconds of the video they help set the right expected payoff in the minds of
the viewers and that gives them a reason not to drop off within the first 5 Seconds of the video so in our next video we need to make sure that there is some level of consistency between the title the thumbnail and the first 5 Seconds of the video and bonus points if you overlay some keywords within the first 5 Seconds of the video because the viewers don't really hear the audio when they get a sneak peek of the video on YouTube's homepage the second tactic related to this doubt is to reinforce the base concept right
at the start of the video let's listen to the very first sentence of these videos from some of the top here do I'm going to spend the next 7 Days buried alive under 20,000 lb of dirt off the world you've been hearing about F12 right cool let's talk about it have you ever wondered what it would be like to drive across the country using only Tesla autopipe here are some of the things we'll be looking at I'm about to spend $30,000 in the next 5 minutes buying the most futuristic Tech on the internet and then
we're going to test it to find out if it actually is the future or if it's all just marketing nonsense do you see a pattern you got that right it's as simple as clear clearly calling out what the video is about as long as it ties back to the expectations set by the title and the thumbnail you just reinforce the expected payoff value so how can we use this tactic as a general rule of thumb within the first few sentences clearly articulate what the video is about moving on to the next doubt which is is
there anything unique about this video to address this doubt the creators do two things the first thing that the creators do is they don't tell but show the viewers why this is a video that they just can't miss depending on the genre of the video the execution of this tactic will change a bit for example in the grand challenges genre Mr Beast relies on showing what is at stake or giving a glimpse of something extraordinary to get you hooked whereas in the edutainment genre like explainer videos done by Cleo abam she gives a glimpse into
an interview or an interesting Insight that was done to create that particular video the idea being that depending on your genre and the audience that you have you give them a trailer of sorts of what's to follow in that video and why this video is unmissable so when you're planning for your next video and thinking about the visuals that you would have at the start of the video think about how can you give a trailer visually of what the video would include some high notes of it without revealing the entire thing if it's a challenge
video then probably you can tease the viewers by mentioning about the secondary Stakes or if it's a product review video mention that apart from the review itself you will talk about one relatively unknown feature of the product which will keep the expected payoff value super high high and give them a reason to stick around and watch the rest of the video going back to the second out which was about is there anything unique in this video here's the second thing that the top creators do which is they over stimulate the viewers with a lot of
visuals I did some research on this and for that I watched hours of content from some of the top creators to understand how do they really construct the first 30 seconds of their video here are the top three insights number one they change the shot in some manner or form every 1.7 7 Seconds number two on average they were about 19 shots in the first 30 seconds and number three less than 1 in five shots was a simple talking head kind of a shot or b-roll footage reinforcing the base concept of the video mind you
this included creators from all kinds of genas productivity explainer challenge you name it the idea is to throw a barrage of hooks at the viewer with the hopes that they would latch onto one of them which would instantly Drive the payoff value of the video and keep them watching the video so when you Crea in your next video during the editing phase do a few things number one literally count the number of times you're changing your shot during the first 30 seconds aim to get an average short length duration to somewhere around 2 seconds or
less number two check what percentage of your shots are actually you talking to the camera directly try to have your face in less than 20% of the shots in the first 30 seconds on that note I would like to know how many shots on average do you have in the first 30 seconds of your video you can put that number in the comment section now if you were able to retain your viewer within the first 30 seconds of the video you have won half the battle as the probability of viewers dropping off from this point
on declines significantly thanks to a psychological concept called the sunk cost fallacy where in the context of the viewer the longer they have watched the video for the more resistance they feel in dropping off from the video mainly because the time that they have invested in watching the video till that point and and with that we jump to the main doubt that viewers have is there anything else left to watch in this video this is way I noticed the genius Creator is doing something very different versus the other creators the first thing that the top
creators do very deliberately is breaking sensory monotony using various pattern interrupts and there's a wide range of tools to choose from the most common one is to change the background in this video you will notice how vanisa Lao breaks the visual monotony by simply changing the setting in which she's filming herself the next one is text overlays in this video you will notice how Ali abdal relies on literally a slide to kind of reinforce the concepts that he's talking about the next one is much simpler to execute it's just about switching between different camera angles
this is something saman Colin heavily rely on to break the visual monotony for the viewers another commonly used method is by relying on b-roll footage like Cleo does in this video if you notice in this video she's just not talking about the concept but also visually displaying what the concept really is about do you know where else do we see this in action Hollywood as per research by psychologist at Cornell University the average short length of English movies in the last 8 years has declined from 12 seconds all the way down to 2.5 seconds today
the only purpose of doing this is to hold the attention of the viewers much better to action this you can do it in Two Steps step one Beyond The 30second Mark take a look at your edit overall make sure sure there's something changing every 5 to 10 seconds step two ask one of your friends to watch the rough edit of your video see where exactly do they lose their focus in the video and check if a pattern interrupt may be the solution for it or even if you are required to trim down the video from
that particular segment that may be the next step next going back to solving for the same doubt is there anything more that I need to watch in this video the second tactic that these stop creators use is that they augment the main story with a suppot here's what Mr Beast has to say on this it's very hard with a single storyline if you're doing like a double digit minute video to just have that one thing grip their entire attention throughout the whole video and pay off at the end um so typically if you're doing a
longer video you should introduce like a Side Story and like re you should have some plan halfway through like to re-engage them so they don't just get bored you know what I mean like and let's see how Mr Beast implements this in his own videos I tied up an FBI agent if he steals this $100,000 from me before midnight he keeps it so that's the main concept of the video the subplot of the video is now there's a giant telephone pole blocking the exit we're now at the Hedge base and I got the $100,000 we're
heading to Walmart where I'm going to try to blend in with normal people there's a pickax back here and while they're inside searching for me you need to pop all the tires on their car to strand them and you were thinking this would not apply to an explainer video take a look at this one in this video Cleo's main story line is the tool I'm using isn't going to go find pictures on line and then collage them together it's going to create a brand new image you've probably heard of this thing it's a form of
artificial intelligence called do do it's called do 2 image generating artificial intelligence and a upla is we set up a little competition I think we should try and do a city skyline without AI first and then we should do like the AI version the absolute best storytellers make their stories engaging by having a sub plot within their base plot as a Creator during the concept phase think about what can be a subplot that can help you drive the main story line for each genre the execution of this concept may look different but that is when
you need to look at how are the top creators in your Niche implementing this concept and it may give you some ideas if you like the video so far hit the like And subscribe button because I plan on making more such videos and I want you to be the first one to know about it feel free to use this graphic when you're planning for your next video you can download it from the link in the description for absolutely free until then see you in the next video
