Engagement Curve
A visualization of how viewer retention changes second by second throughout a video.
An engagement curve is a graph that plots viewer retention percentage against time throughout a video. It shows the percentage of the original audience still watching at each second or time interval.
Engagement curves reveal the narrative structure of viewer attention: where the hook successfully holds viewers, where the video begins to lose them, and whether a call-to-action at the end is being seen at all.
A healthy engagement curve for a short-form video typically shows:
- A steep early drop in the first 1–2 seconds (viewers who immediately swipe past)
- A plateau or slower decline through the body of the video
- A final drop at the end
The most common named drop patterns are: Hook Miss (steep 0–3 second drop), Plot Hole (sharp drop at 7–15 seconds), CTA Friction (strong middle, cliff near end), and Cliff (sudden large drop at a specific moment).
Unlike standard retention analytics, VidCognition's brain engagement curve overlays predicted neural activation — showing not just when viewers leave, but what brain states are present at each second.
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