If your video marketing ROI reporting still revolves around "views," you're measuring the wrong thing.

In B2B finance and insurance marketing, views are often used as a proxy for success because they're easy to export and simple to present upward. But views don't measure intent, friction, or action. Gartner found that B2B buyers spend just 17% of their buying time meeting with potential suppliers. Views don't tell you whether your video influenced the more than 80% of the buyer journey that happens before anyone talks to your sales team or advisors.

This is important: if views aren't triggering measurable intent signals in the channels around the video, they're just noise.

The fix isn't complicated. You measure intent signals based on placement. Because placement determines purpose. And purpose determines the metric.

Below are starting targets to gut-check your numbers against when video is working inside enterprise finance and insurance marketing. They're ballpark ranges, not industry-wide benchmarks. The comparison that matters most is your own numbers over time, before and after a video goes live.

How to Measure Video Marketing ROI by Placement

Each placement gives your video a different job, so each one gets its own intent signals.

1. Landing Pages: Friction & Action

When video lives on a landing page, its job is to reduce friction and increase forward movement. Whether it's a product explainer, institutional credibility video, or advisor recruitment asset, you're measuring whether it supports conversion.

Starting targets:

  • Play rate: 25%–30%

  • Bounce rate: 40%–55%

  • Time on page: 2–3 minutes

  • Average watch percentage: 50%–60%

  • Rate of action: 10%–15%

  • Google page ranking: Top 10 (page 1)

If your play rate is below 25%, positioning or thumbnail design may be off. If the play rate is healthy but your bounce rate pushes beyond 55%, your video may be creating curiosity but not clarity.

If your average watch percentage sits in the 50–60% range and your rate of action hits 10–15%, your video is supporting movement through the funnel. For outside context, Wistia's 2026 State of Video Report, which looked at more than 13 million videos, found that videos under a minute hold viewers for 52% of their length on average.

Views alone can't tell you that story.

2. Email Campaigns: Conversion Intent

Video within your emails should accelerate decision-making. In enterprise financial services, that often means pushing the viewer toward a defined next step.

Starting targets:

  • Play rate: 8%–14%

  • Rate of action: 3%–8%

  • Average watch percentage: ~65%

Email audiences are typically more qualified and closer to a defined action. That's why the average watch percentage often trends higher, around 65%.

If your play rate falls below 8%, your framing or subject line may need work. If the watch percentage is strong but your rate of action sits below 3%, your video may be informative but not directive.

For a sense of the upside, a personalized video campaign we produced for Sun Life reached an 88% email open rate and a 62% click-through rate.

Again, a view count won't reveal that nuance.

3. Social Channels: Engagement Depth

Social video reporting in enterprise environments should measure authority and depth, not reach alone. For finance and insurance brands, credibility compounds over time.

Starting targets:

  • Average engagement rate: ~3%

  • Profile views: 2%–5% of total viewers

  • Average watch percentage: 40%–50%

  • Follower / subscriber conversion: 0.5%–1%

  • Viewed vs swiped away: 25%–30%

  • Accounts reached: 70% new / 30% existing

  • Play rate: 3%–6%

If the average watch percentage drops below 40%, your hook or positioning may be weak. If your profile views hit 2–5%, that's a strong signal of authority-building. And if 70% of your accounts reached are new and engagement holds around 3%, you're expanding visibility without losing engagement.

One update since the video: as of 2026, Socialinsider's analysis of 1.3 million LinkedIn company posts puts average engagement for video at 6%. If LinkedIn is your main channel, treat 3% as a floor, not a goal. A founder spotlight series we produced for the Accelerator Centre averaged around 5% engagement on LinkedIn, nearly double their other content from that period.

That's depth. Not just distribution.

4. Customer Success: Activation & Retention

This is where enterprise finance and insurance teams often see the clearest long-term value. Video inside onboarding, advisor enablement, and product education should influence retention and operational efficiency.

Starting targets:

  • Product adoption rate: 25%–35%

  • Average watch percentage: 50%+

  • Customer effort score: 4.0+

  • Support ticket deflection: 20%–30%

If your support tickets drop by 20–30% after implementing an onboarding video, that's operational impact. If your product adoption sits in the 25–35% range, that's measurable activation. (One note on customer effort score: 4.0+ assumes a 5-point scale, so adjust if your team uses a different one.)

None of these outcomes depends on view count.

The Reporting Shift

Better video reporting doesn't require more dashboards, more tools, or more data. It requires measuring the right signals.

Across landing pages, email, social, and customer success environments, views consistently function as an exposure metric. They indicate that content was delivered, but they don't indicate that a buying decision progressed.

In enterprise finance and insurance marketing, the most meaningful influence happens before a lead is formally captured in the CRM. Video contributes during this upstream phase by reducing friction, increasing clarity, reinforcing authority, and supporting activation. If reporting focuses only on exposure, that influence remains invisible.

When reporting shifts toward intent-based metrics such as play rate, average watch percentage, rate of action, product adoption, and support deflection, performance aligns with how buying decisions actually unfold. That alignment is what makes reporting materially stronger.

Instead of reporting how many people saw a video, you report how many people progressed because of it.

Views still have context in an awareness measurement. They just shouldn't anchor ROI conversations. Intent signals should.

If you're the one making the budget case upward, it helps to know what B2B video actually costs before that conversation starts.

Frequently asked questions

What is the ROI of video marketing on social media?

Social video ROI shows up as engagement depth, not reach alone: average watch percentage, profile views, and follower conversion. As of 2026, Socialinsider's analysis of 1.3 million LinkedIn company posts puts average engagement for video at 6%. Track how those signals trend over time against your own starting point.

How do you calculate video marketing ROI?

The standard formula is the return a video generated, minus what it cost, divided by what it cost. In B2B, most of a video's influence happens before a lead reaches your CRM, so pair that formula with intent signals like play rate, average watch percentage, and rate of action.

Where can I find video marketing benchmarks?

Wistia's annual State of Video Report and Socialinsider's social media benchmarks both publish data drawn from millions of videos and posts. Use them for context, but the most useful benchmark is your own numbers before and after a video goes live. Our 3-minute Video Benchmark Assessment also shows how your program compares.

See How Your Video Program Compares

If you're rethinking how you measure video performance beyond views, the next step is evaluating the system behind it.

Our 3-minute Video Benchmark Assessment reviews your program across Strategy, Production, and Distribution. You'll receive a custom benchmark score and a clear view of your biggest opportunities to improve performance.

Take The 3-Minute Video Benchmark Assessment (free)

Still here? You’ve earned the full video transcript

If you want to make your video reports 80% better, you have to stop reporting on views as if they're the main indicator for ROI. Most of us have been conditioned to believe that a spike in views is the ultimate sign of a successful video, especially when we're reporting up to leadership.

Quite frankly, though, we grasp at that stat because we're struggling to find anything else that points towards a real financial return. But 80% of the B2B journey happens before a prospect ever talks to your sales team or advisors. And it's these stats in the first 80% that need to be reported on. If your views aren't triggering specific intent signals on your landing pages or in your emails, you're just entertaining the wrong people.

I'm Brandon, Creative Director at Oak + Rumble, and I've spent 12 years working with finance and insurance teams on their video strategy and execution, creating content that has helped secure multimillion-dollar deals.

I want you to stop trying to do video reporting on hard mode. Grab a notebook and a pen. I'm going to give you the specific intent signals you can use in your reports to prove video is actually doing the heavy lifting.

The simplest way to break down these intent signals is by video placement. This may be obvious, but I feel like I need to say it. When you're analyzing video performance, you have to look at the ecosystem around the video. That means the analytics inside the actual video player and the channel it sits in, like a landing page or an email campaign.

I'm not going to go into detail on every stat that's important to track. We'll save that for a future deep dive video, but if you find it helpful to screenshot the detailed intent signals, feel free. Here's what you should be looking for.

Let's start with landing pages. We track these stats specifically to measure friction. For example, if your play rate is high but your bounce rate is up, your video isn't doing its job of keeping people on the page. Something you should definitely investigate.

For email, the goal is conversion intent. We're looking for high click-through and action rates to see if the video is actually pushing the viewers to the next step in the funnel, like booking a discovery call or downloading a policy update.

For social, we're looking at engagement depth. Things like average percent watched, shares, and even profile views tell us if we're building real authority or if people are just scrolling past us in their feed.

And finally, for customer success, it's all about activation. These metrics prove the video is actually reducing churn and increasing satisfaction, which is how you justify long-term enterprise spend.

You'll notice views and sales weren't on those lists. By tracking the intent portion of that 80% journey before the CRM, you've eliminated the noise. Your reporting is now more accurate, and you're no longer grasping at straws to prove that your content is doing exactly what you promised it would do.

If you're curious about how your video marketing stacks up against others in your industry, take our 3-minute Video Benchmark Assessment. It evaluates your program across Strategy, Production, and Distribution. You'll receive a custom benchmark score and a report that identifies the biggest opportunities to improve your video performance. Link is in the post above or the description below.