Let’s be honest: content KPIs aren’t well understood.
Marketers track early-stage metrics like impressions and clicks, as well as later-stage metrics like leads and transactions. But many don’t track anything in between, let alone correlate content consumption with conversion.
Streaming content isn’t understood any better. In fact, Googling “video KPIs” produces mostly AI-written advertiser bait with answers like “video views” and “minutes watched.” Marketers clearly know what to track for content, but they don’t seem to know how to translate those numbers into business outcomes. Because if they did, they’d know those are metrics, not KPIs.
Key performance indicators (KPIs) aren’t just metrics. We know this because when our CMOs ask how a video performed, telling them how many views it got isn’t an answer. KPIs are goals. They’re metrics measured against other metrics or dimensions. In other words, a view isn’t a KPI, but views per week or views per user are. With this combination of metrics and desired goals or …