The Effectiveness Rate of Photo vs Video on Social Media

The Effectiveness Rate hits the measurement sweet spot for brands who truly value every interaction with their content and want hard data to see what inspires that action. For marketers who are new to the Effectiveness Rate, here’s how it’s calculated: 

• ‍Likes + Comments + Saves + Video Views / Reach.

By utilizing reach, brands can understand how content performs without skewed numbers by a high follower count and lower reach. This is an important consideration, especially considering the shift from social media to social entertainment. 

The Effectiveness Rate illuminates even your posts that many people don’t see. By including reach, brands can understand if the content resonates with those who can see it. 

If you only analyze from an engagement perspective, it might appear that the content under-performed when it didn’t. Leading brands use Effectiveness Rates alongside engagement rates in their reporting to gain a more informed and holistic view of content performance and incorporate those learnings into their strategies moving forward. 

How Does Dash Hudson Measure Engagement Rate?

Engagement Rates measure how much your audience interacts, is involved and is devoted to your content. Dash Hudson measures engagement rate by calculating total engagements per post (think likes, comments, and shares), divided by reach, and multiplied by 100. Account engagement is measured by your total engagement, divided by your follower count, and multiplied by 100. The main difference is the inclusion of reach for individual post engagement and followers for total account engagement. 

• Engagement Rate calculation is: Interactions / Followers X 100  
• Engagement Rate calculation for accounts is: Interactions / Followers X 100

How Do You Measure the Success of a Video?

Video has seen amazing growth on social, with more video-specific formats being added to channels all the time. 

It is, however, one of the trickier forms of content to measure correctly and accurately. Audiences engage with video differently than photos, so expecting your video content to perform the same as photos can lead brands down a path that needs more strategic opportunities. When looking at an image, a user quickly intakes the information at a glance and then chooses how to engage with it, i.e., like, comment, or save. When a video comes across their screen, the primary action is now watching the video, and more is asked of the user. That is why video views are the primary action, and likes, comments, and saves are the secondary actions when users go above and beyond to interact. These video-specific attributes are why many brands lean on effectiveness as their primary metric to understand video performance. Weighting video views equal to likes, comments, and saves is what makes effectiveness such a strong indicator of video success. 

This is why Effectiveness Rate is an excellent indicator of video success — and when combined with Entertainment Score, brands get a robust picture that shows precisely how impactful their creative content is. The Entertainment Score measures your engagement and retention rates so marketers can see more than how their video performs at the moment. They can also see how it contributes to overall audience engagement, retention and growth. 

So, what’s the difference between Effectiveness Rate and Entertainment Score? Effectiveness Rate weighs the impact of multiple quantitative KPIs — likes, reach, views, and engagement. Conversely, Entertainment Score indicates your qualitative performance — how many people engage and watch the content? 

Effectiveness Rate: Photos vs. Videos

It can take time to figure out how to measure content success. When diving into content performance, the team at Dash Hudson has always been proponents of social content segmentation, and our community of marketers has backed that up, with Boards being one of their favorite tools. Content segmentation is crucial when measuring and even more so when looking at effectiveness. Because video views are part of the calculation, this typically leads to lower Effectiveness Rates for photos and higher rates — which you’ll see in action in the benchmarks below. By continually segmenting photo and video effectiveness, you can compare apples to apples and set more accurate goals. 

Effectiveness Rate Across Industries 

When incorporating a new metric, it’s important to have context on where your brand is currently sitting and benchmarks for how your specific industry performs on social media. Industries like Beauty, an early adopter of video, and industries like CPG, Food and Beverage, Travel and Publishing, whose messaging lends itself well to video, will have higher video Effectiveness Rates (see below). 

While Fashion, Luxury and Retail’s overall numbers are a bit lower for both photo and video, that should be considered when setting goals and judging the success of content. Ensure you view your effectiveness numbers in the context of your industry performance and the way the numbers are trending. 

For example: If you’re noticing a 0.75% drop in effectiveness over the last quarter, but your industry as a whole saw a 1.5% drop, that will be essential information to provide during your quarterly reporting.

Effectiveness Rate Benchmarks by Industry

We looked at the average Effectiveness Rate for each month during Q4 of 2023 and Q1 of 2024 to identify industry trends for photo and video performance. These highlight nine key industries: Beauty, Retail, Media, Publishing, Fashion, Luxury, CPG, Food and Beverage, Home and Travel. An Effectiveness Rate between 4.6-8% for photos and carousels and 16.5-17.1% for videos is the general performance range that marketers should aim to hit, with some fluctuation depending on your specific industry.

Overall: All Industries

• Average Q3 2023 Photo Effectiveness Rate: 11.7%
• Average Q4 2023 Photo Effectiveness Rate: 8.0%
• Average Q1 2024 Photo Effectiveness Rate: 4.6%
• Performance change: -43%

• Average Q3 2023 Video Effectiveness Rate: 19.9%
• Average Q4 2023 Video Effectiveness Rate: 16.5%
• Average Q1 2024 Video Effectiveness Rate: 17.1%
• Performance change: -19%

Beauty

• Average Q3 2023 Photo Effectiveness Rate: 6.5%
• Average Q4 2023 Photo Effectiveness Rate:  5.4%
• Average Q1 2024 Photo Effectiveness Rate: 5.6%
  Performance change: 4%
• Average Q3 2023 Video Effectiveness Rate: 11.7%
• Average Q4 2023 Video Effectiveness Rate: 12.8%
• Average Q1 2024 Video Effectiveness Rate: 11.9%
• Performance change: -7%

CPG

• Average Q3 2023 Photo Effectiveness Rate: 4.7%
• Average Q4 2023 Photo Effectiveness Rate: 4.7%
• Average Q1 2024 Photo Effectiveness Rate: 5.7%
• Performance change: 21%

• Average Q3 2023 Video Effectiveness Rate: 17.7%
• Average Q4 2023 Video Effectiveness Rate: 16.7%
• Average Q1 2024 Video Effectiveness Rate: 24.5%
• Performance change: 47%

Retail‍

• Average Q3 2023 Photo Effectiveness Rate: 3.4%
• Average Q4 2023 Photo Effectiveness Rate: 3.5%
• Average Q1 2024 Photo Effectiveness Rate: 3.4%
• Performance change: -4%

• Average Q3 2023 Video Effectiveness Rate: 12.7%
• Average Q4 2023 Video Effectiveness Rate: 11.3%
• Average Q1 2024 Video Effectiveness Rate: 11.9%
• Performance change: 5%

‍Fashion

• Average Q3 2023 Photo Effectiveness Rate: 3.5%
• Average Q4 2023 Photo Effectiveness Rate: 3.5% 
• Average Q1 2024 Photo Effectiveness Rate: 3.5%
• Performance change: No change

• Average Q3 2023 Video Effectiveness Rate: 11%
• Average Q4 2023 Video Effectiveness Rate: 9.5%
• Average Q1 2024 Video Effectiveness Rate: 9.2%
• Performance change: -3%

Luxury

• Average Q3 2023 Photo Effectiveness Rate: 4.4%
• Average Q4 2023 Photo Effectiveness Rate: 4.3%
• Average Q1 2024 Photo Effectiveness Rate: 4.5%
• Performance change: 5%

• Average Q3 2023 Video Effectiveness Rate: 18.5%
• Average Q4 2023 Video Effectiveness Rate: 10.2%
• Average Q1 2024 Video Effectiveness Rate: 9.2%
• Performance change: -10%

Media  

• Average Q3 2023 Photo Effectiveness Rate: 4.1%
• Average Q4 2023 Photo Effectiveness Rate: 10.4%
• Average Q1 2024 Photo Effectiveness Rate: 4.7%
• Performance change: -55%

• Average Q3 2023 Video Effectiveness Rate: 38.3%
• Average Q4 2023 Video Effectiveness Rate: 35.7%
• Average Q1 2024 Video Effectiveness Rate: 45.8%
• Performance change: 28%

Publishing

• Average Q3 2023 Photo Effectiveness Rate: 5.2%
• Average Q4 2023 Photo Effectiveness Rate: 5%
• Average Q1 2024 Photo Effectiveness Rate: 5.6%
• Performance change: 6%

• Average Q3 2023 Video Effectiveness Rate: 32.2%
• Average Q4 2023 Video Effectiveness Rate: 25.1%
• Average Q1 2024 Video Effectiveness Rate: 32.4%
• Performance change: 29%

Home

• Average Q3 2023 Photo Effectiveness Rate: 3.1%
• Average Q4 2023 Photo Effectiveness Rate: 3.5%
• Average Q1 2024 Photo Effectiveness Rate: 3.4%
• Performance change: -4%

• Average Q3 2023 Video Effectiveness Rate: 15.1%
• Average Q4 2023 Video Effectiveness Rate: 11.9%
• Average Q1 2024 Video Effectiveness Rate: 10.2%
• Performance change: -14%

Food & Beverage

• Average Q3 2023 Photo Effectiveness Rate: 5.4%
• Average Q4 2023 Photo Effectiveness Rate: 5.3%
• Average Q1 2024 Photo Effectiveness Rate: 5.9%
• Performance change: 11%

• Average Q3 2023 Video Effectiveness Rate: 15.5%
• Average Q4 2023 Video Effectiveness Rate: 12.3%
• Average Q1 2024 Video Effectiveness Rate: 16.4%
• Performance change: 33%

Key Takeaways

The Effectiveness Rate is a powerful metric that keeps up with the demanding nature of content measurement in 2024. For brands who are currently or plan to incorporate video into their strategy, the Effectiveness Rate will quickly become your best friend. Use content segmentation for your best-performing photos and videos and keep track of industry benchmarks to gauge your brand’s performance properly and set better, more well-informed goals.

FAQs

How do you measure success on social media posts?

To measure the success of social media posts, social marketers should first outline what post-specific KPIs they want to measure — a likely KPI is engagement rate, but these could include effectiveness rate, clicks, follower growth, or any other metric that helps you find success in your social strategy. For example, if your social campaign focuses on building brand awareness, you might prioritize engagement and follower growth over metrics like website clicks or purchases. Success is determined by whether or not you reach these goals. It’s also important to know that even if you don’t reach your goals, any insights are helpful for post-campaign reflection, especially when it comes time to set post goals for your new campaign. 

How do you measure the success of a social campaign?

The first step when considering how to report on successful social media campaigns is to define goals in your social media strategy — this can range from reach to impressions, clicks, conversions, or whatever else makes sense in the context of your overall marketing strategy. 

From there, social managers can use tools like Dash Hudson, platform analytics, Google Analytics, and more to track whether or not you reach your goals. It’s also important to measure these against overall performance to determine whether or not the KPIs you set for social content had a broader impact.

How do you measure the engagement of your posts?

Social marketers can measure the engagement of Instagram posts under the ‘Insights Tab’ (or the analytics tab in whatever native app you use) or with Dash Hudson’s Social Media Insights or Dashboards tool to pull in multi-channel social media analytics engagement rates for posts, Reels, campaigns, and more.