As videos become increasingly popular, an important question for marketers has also arisen: How do we measure the effectiveness and ROI of our video content?

TV's recent decline in viewership has been the result of the rise of video content marketing. But creating effective videos of substance and value does have its own costs, which must be justified by marketers to the company.

Let's face it, there are a dozen different metrics and statistics available that validate our decisions, but which of those has real business impact? Here are a few metrics that can clearly define the returns on your content investment:

1. Reaction

Every video, regardless of its type or length, should have a call-to-action. The video should incite the viewers to react the way you intended them to after watching the video.

The type of reaction depends on your goals and objectives for creating the video. Did the viewer sign up for a newsletter/trial, click on your link and/or buy your product? Or did the viewer just engage with the video through a comment or share?

The questions can be answered with a yes or a no, and measuring the numbers of these is an important indicator of ROI.

2. Revenue

The long-term goals of all your content marketing efforts — whether video or text — are revenue and profitability. Keeping track of your sales numbers is vital to measure the ROI on a video you just posted.

For example, your sales might see an increase of a certain product or offer that was marketed through a recent video you posted. That increase in sales is your ROI on the video (possibly making revenue the easiest ROI metric to measure).

3. Engagement

Engagement is not just about the viewer liking or loving the video, but also about how many viewed and shared the video and/or commented on it.

A few engagement metrics are retention rate, shares, comments, likes, retweets, etc. An important metric is "retention rate" — how many people bothered to watch the video the whole way through.

4. Reach

How many people were "reached" means how many people saw the video. This is one of the most popular metrics as it signifies that your content was "delivered" to your target audience.

That being said, a "view" has surprisingly multiple definitions. Some sites define it as at least a second watched, some more. Some ignore passive views, some don't. Since this not standardized, it can be difficult to track. Thus, reach should be measured for all sites accordingly.

5. Viewability

Viewability goes into "how" your video was watched. Was the video played on your page or a separate landing page? Was it played with audio? Was the whole video watched? If not, how much of it did people watch?

As can be seen from these questions, the answers vary, and there are many variables involved. The key to measuring this is to define which information would be most useful for your business.

Read also: 5 Advantages Of Content Marketing

So you just read about some of the most realistically measurable metrics for content marketing ROI. How do you measure your video content marketing? Do you agree with the above, or do you use different metrics? Let us know in the comments below.