Hold Rate / ThruPlay

Hold rate is how well your video keeps people watching after the hook, and ThruPlay is Meta's related measure of a video played to completion or to at least 15 seconds, whichever comes first.

You got the stop. People paused on your video in the first couple of seconds, and now you want to know whether they actually stuck around or bailed the moment the real content started. That is what retention tells you. Hold rate looks at roughly the share of people who keep watching past the opening, so you can see whether the middle of your video earns its place or quietly loses everyone who gave it a chance.

ThruPlay is the Meta metric that sits underneath this. Meta counts a ThruPlay when someone watches your entire video or at least 15 continuous seconds, whichever comes first, which means short videos have to be watched all the way through while longer ones only need to clear the 15-second mark. ThruPlay is a native option you can optimize toward and report on. Hold rate itself, often figured as ThruPlays divided by 3-second plays, is a custom metric you build on top, so expect to set it up yourself.

The honest catch is that retention is not revenue. A video can hold attention beautifully, carry people right through to the end, and still sell nothing, because watching and buying are two different acts. High hold rate tells you the video is watchable and paced well; it does not tell you the offer landed. Use it to fix pacing and story, then look to your conversion numbers to find out whether any of that watching turned into money.

Holding the room is not the same as closing it.