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Metrics

Retention (Watch Time)

How much of a video viewers actually watch — the metric short-form algorithms weight most heavily.

Retention measures how long viewers stay, usually shown as a curve across the video's length. Feeds reward clips that hold attention, so retention (and its cousin watch time) is the strongest lever on reach. A steep early drop points to a weak hook; a mid-video dip points to slow pacing.

Tight edits, B-roll and captions all exist largely to protect retention.

How retention feeds the score

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