What are you looking for from video marketing? What you get out depends on what you put in, which is why measuring for smarter wins is so important.

We recently looked at some data about how long people watch videos we’ve produced for our clients, and the results aren’t what you’d expect.

A B2C customer published two videos. One was an animated product overview, and the other was a presenter-led how to video. The former did really well, and most people stuck around for at least 45 seconds before there was any audience drop-off.

But the latter seems tailor-made for a B2C audience: It had personality and directly addressed the viewer, and yet it saw audience drop-off starting at 15 seconds in.

The data shows that one of the approaches was more effective. Despite what conventional wisdom might have said about marketing to B2C leads, people preferred the animated, in-depth explanation, rather than the personable presenter who demonstrated a specific product.

A recent study by BrightEdge looked at content click-through rates and found that videos have a five percent higher CTR than written posts. So if you want people to explore more of your site, you should measure this way, right?

Well, Yahoo recently said that dwell time might be a better indicator of engagement than clicks. So which one should you optimize against? It comes back around to what you’re looking to do. Start with your goals and measure your videos against them. Identify where you’re losing your audience or what’s making them stick around and build strategies to replicate your success.

What’s your ideal video objective? Tell us in the comments below or by tweeting @Brafton.

Alex Butzbach is a Marketing Writer at Brafton. He studied Communications at Boston College, and after a brief stint teaching English in Japan, he entered the world of content marketing. When he isn't writing and researching, he can be found on a bike somewhere in Metro Boston.