You shot a video and put it into ads. It has plenty of views but few leads. Often the cause is the first second: the person saw a logo or “Welcome, we are a company…” and scrolled on. The ad was paid for and shown, but nobody actually watched the video.
Below are five checks you can do yourself, without an editor or a marketer. We checked the data and wording against Meta materials and YouTube Help on 18 October 2026. Where a number comes from a third-party study or from “practitioners”, we say so. A quick note on terms: a “hook” in video marketing means the opening of the video, the first seconds that have to grab attention.
1. Start with a benefit for the viewer
In “The Science of the Hook” (Meta, 15 December 2025), Meta says great Reels “hook” viewers within the first few seconds, and that is when a person decides whether to keep watching. Meta names three ways to open:
- a value promise: “I’ll show you how to check whether you are wasting money on ads”;
- a statement of intent: “Now I’ll show you why your leads are getting more expensive”;
- a question or invitation: “How much does one lead cost you? Do you know?”
An opening like “Welcome, we are a company…” or a logo splash does not do this: it is about you, not a benefit for the viewer.
Check it yourself: mute your video and watch it. Is the first phrase or frame a benefit to the person, or a greeting and a company name?
2. A person and a voice on screen right away
Analysts at Emplifi (2026, summarised by Social Media Today on 22 March 2026) studied 10,110 Reels from 704 brands on Facebook. Their findings: when someone speaks in the first 3 seconds, retention at the 10-second mark is roughly 25% higher than for videos with music only. When a person is on screen for at least one second in the first 3 seconds, 10-second retention is roughly 10% higher, but the effect fades by the 30-second mark.
There are caveats, and it is important to state them. Emplifi is a third-party company, not Meta. We have not seen the full report with its methodology, only a summary. This is Facebook Reels, not Instagram. So treat it as a guide, not a law. Still, the direction is clear: a live person and a voice usually hold attention better than a pretty picture over music.
Check it yourself: can you see a person and hear a voice in the first 3 seconds? If not, try filming a new opening on your phone: you, on camera, saying the main idea in one sentence.
3. Sound or subtitles: you need both
The sources disagree here, and we will not pretend otherwise.
What Meta says. According to its material, campaigns with music or voiceover in Reels deliver “up to 13% higher incremental conversions” (“incremental” means conversions that would not have happened otherwise). The words “up to” matter: Meta gives no methodology, so this is a ceiling, not an expected result.
What practitioners say. Some people watch without sound: on public transport, in a queue, at work. So, in practitioners’ view, the point should be readable within 2–3 seconds even with the sound off. We found no primary source for this figure; it is blog advice and experience. It does not contradict Meta: voice and subtitles work together.
What to do. Voice plus subtitles with the main phrase. The first words should be on screen immediately.
Check it yourself: turn on subtitles and see whether the first words appear on screen in the first second.
4. Don’t guess: test the opening
In the same material, Meta advises trying different openings with an A/B test: take one video and swap in different first seconds. Even a small change to the first phrase can change the result a lot, and you do not need a different video for it.
How to do it simply: film the main part once and two different openings, for example a question and a value promise. Run both versions under the same conditions: same budget, same audience, same time. After a few days compare which opening holds people longer and brings cheaper leads. Do not draw conclusions after an hour or a few hundred impressions.
Check it yourself: how many different openings have you tried for your video? If one, you do not know whether it is the best.
5. Where to see whether the opening worked
YouTube Shorts. On its metrics page, YouTube Help describes the ratio between views of your Shorts and skips, as a percentage. This is your indicator of the opening: how many people stayed and how many swiped away. Note: in the Ukrainian help this metric has different labels in different places, so look for it in YouTube Studio analytics for Shorts by its meaning, not by its exact name.
YouTube does not say what the figure should be. Practitioners mention “70–80% stay to watch”: these are estimates from third-party blogs for creators, and there is no official YouTube figure. So compare not with other people’s percentages but with your own earlier videos.
Meta. In the ads account report, look for the metric of plays of at least 3 seconds (in English, “3-second video plays”). If you divide it by impressions, you get the share of people the opening caught. That share is useful, but it is your own calculation, not a ready-made Meta metric. We did not check the exact column name in a live account, so go by the meaning: how many times the video played for at least 3 seconds.
The view-count trap. Since 24 August 2026, according to its Help, YouTube counts a view at the start of playback of any content, including Shorts. So the number of views itself says nothing about the quality of the opening: the view is recorded even if the person swiped away at once. Look at the ratio of views to skips, not at the total.
Check it yourself: open the analytics of your latest video. How many people watch and how many scroll?
How not to shoot a new video every time
People usually think a test requires several videos. In fact it does not. Practitioners advise splitting a video into two parts: an unchanged body and a swappable opening. You shoot the main part once and make several openings: a different question, a different promise, a different background or prop in the frame. One video then yields several versions, at the cost of one video plus a few extra sentences. This is the practitioners’ approach; neither Meta nor Google gives an official figure for how many versions are enough.
From our practice
We most often see two scenarios. First: the video opens with a splash screen or a logo because “that is how the company does it”. Second: a good video already exists, but nobody thinks of replacing the first seconds to see what changes. Both are fixed in half an hour, not a week of shooting. These are our observations, not statistics.
If you are launching video in Meta and want to be sure the ad is not rejected, read 5 small things that make Meta reject your ad. And if you think you get more leads from Meta than appear in your CRM, see the breakdown of the discrepancy.
Summary: five checks
- First phrase: a benefit for the viewer, not a greeting.
- A person and a voice on screen in the first 3 seconds.
- Voice and subtitles with the main phrase.
- Two different openings of one video, compared under the same conditions.
- In analytics, look at how many people stayed, not at the number of views.
A video without leads is not always a “bad creative”. Often the opening simply gives the person no reason to stay. Change it and compare. And we can work through the rest together.
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