Most video reporting hides the one number that matters: what you actually paid for a view somebody chose to finish.
Start with completed views, not impressions
An impression tells you a player loaded. A completed view tells you a person stayed. When we audit YouTube, social video, and CTV accounts, the accounts that look efficient on CPM often look expensive on CPV, because a cheap impression bought from low attention inventory rarely finishes.
What good looks like
Across the accounts we manage, healthy YouTube CPV usually lands well under the account average once creative length, frequency caps, and placement exclusions are tuned. CTV behaves differently: completion is high by default, so the work moves to frequency and audience overlap.
How we act on it
- Freeze a baseline in writing before anything changes.
- Move spend toward the placements that complete, not the ones that impress.
- Re-check creative length against drop off, then rebuild the cut that loses viewers.
Want your own numbers read this way? Book a demo and we will walk your account line by line.