The second quarter of your video is where you lose the sale

Ad platforms tell you what percentage of viewers reach 25%, 50%, 75% and 100% of your video. Almost nobody reads those four numbers. They might be the most actionable data you own.

The pattern we keep finding

On account after account, the retention curve looks like this: a decent share of viewers passes the first quarter — and then the second quarter falls off a cliff. On one account we audited, 18 of 19 videos lost the most viewers in exactly that stretch. That’s not nineteen bad videos; that’s one structural habit: a strong hook that hands over to a slow middle.

What the curve tells you that averages can’t

• Drop after the hook → the middle stalls. The fix is pacing, not a new opening.
• Holds to the end but low CTR → the video does its job and the CTA doesn’t. Change the ending or the offer. Don’t touch the video.
• Never gets past the first quarter → now it’s a hook problem. This is the only case where it is.

These are three different fixes with three different costs — and without the curve, they all look identical: “low CTR”.

Turn it into a brief

Your account’s average curve is a shooting brief: it tells the editor exactly at which second attention breaks. ROASTED puts that into every report’s action plan automatically — the middle must tease what’s next, the length should match how long winners actually get watched, and the CTA goes where your viewers still are.