"Shorter is always better" tanked my watch time
I'd read it a hundred times: cut everything, go under 20 seconds, win the algorithm. So I took a script that ran 47s and hacked it to 18s. Tight. Punchy. Useless.
Views: 31k. Average view duration: 11s. People weren't finishing the short.
The problem was I'd removed the payoff to hit a length target. The hook promised "the dumbest reason your ads get rejected" and the 18s cut rushed the reveal so hard it felt like a non-answer.
I restored the 44s version with one extra example. Average view duration went to 29s, completion rate from 41% to 68%, views to 96k.
The lesson: length isn't the metric, completion is. A finished 45s beats an abandoned 18s every single time.
Hook Confessions
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"Shorter is always better" tanked my watch time
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