Thumb stop rate measures the percentage of people who pause their scroll to watch your video ad, indicating how compelling your hook is.
Thumb stop rate (TSR) is the ratio of 3-second video views to total impressions. It measures how effectively the first 3 seconds of your video ad stop a user from scrolling past. A high thumb stop rate means your opening, whether it's a bold visual, a provocative question, or an unexpected moment, is compelling enough to interrupt passive scrolling behavior.
The metric is most relevant on feed-based placements (Meta Feed, TikTok For You Page, Instagram Reels) where users are actively scrolling and the ad must compete with organic content for attention. In these environments, you have roughly 1.5–3 seconds to earn the viewer's continued attention.
Thumb stop rate is a leading indicator of creative quality. It tells you whether your hook is working before downstream metrics like CTR or conversion have enough data to be statistically meaningful, making it especially valuable for early creative testing decisions.
Without a strong thumb stop rate, everything else in your creative, the offer, the CTA, the product demo, never gets seen. A creative with a 15% TSR will generate 2x fewer 3-second views than one with a 30% TSR at the same spend. Optimizing TSR is the highest-leverage early intervention in the creative funnel: it improves every downstream metric by simply ensuring more people watch past the first few seconds.
Example
“A subscription app tests two video hooks, one opening on a product demo and one opening on a relatable frustration scene. The frustration hook achieves 34% TSR vs. 18% for the product demo, driving the creative team to lead all new concepts with problem-first hooks.”
Segwise Feature
Track thumb stop rate across all creatives
Hook rate measures what percentage of viewers who started watching a video continued past the 3-second mark, assessing how well your opening retains initial attention.
Learn moreCreative PerformanceVideo completion rate (VCR) is the percentage of video ad views that are watched to completion, measuring how well the full creative holds viewer attention.
Learn moreCreative PerformanceCreative fatigue occurs when an ad audience has seen the same creative too many times, causing performance metrics like CTR and ROAS to decline.
Learn moreCreative PerformanceClick-through rate (CTR) is the percentage of ad impressions that result in a click, measuring how effectively your creative drives intent to act.
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