Thumbstop rate
Thumbstop rate is the share of impressions where the viewer stopped scrolling long enough to register the ad, most often defined as 2 or 3 second views over impressions. It is the same family of metric as hook rate, and the only thing that separates them in practice is which view threshold your team agreed to use.
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Why it matters
The reason to care about the distinction is comparability. Two agencies reporting "thumbstop" on different thresholds will produce numbers that differ by several percentage points on identical creative, and a set of benchmarks copied from a blog post is worthless unless the threshold matches.
How to apply it
- Pick one threshold, 2 or 3 seconds, and write it into your reporting template.
- Use the same threshold across every placement, then compare only within a placement.
- Track it per creative rather than per campaign, since it is a creative metric.
- Treat a fall of a third or more against the set median as a signal to replace the ad.
What people get wrong
- Mixing 2 second and 3 second definitions in one report.
- Comparing your thumbstop rate to a published benchmark without checking its threshold.
- Treating it as a measure of ad quality rather than of the opening frames.
Frequently asked questions
Is thumbstop rate the same as hook rate?
Effectively yes. Both divide short video views by impressions. The difference is whether the threshold is 2 or 3 seconds, so the two names are often used for the same calculation.
What is a good thumbstop rate?
On a 3 second threshold, 20 to 30% on TikTok and 15 to 25% on Meta feed is typical. On a 2 second threshold the same creative will report higher.
Which metric should I standardise on?
Whichever your platform reports natively, applied consistently. Consistency matters more than the choice.