Should you ask a creator for the numbers only they can see?

Say you sell reusable earplugs for sleeping. A creator posted your video four days ago on their own account, and you've already read the number under it and everything people wrote there.

Then someone in the room points out that the creator can see more than you can. Their app tells them things about your video that were never on the page you were reading.

So you start drafting a message and delete it, twice, because asking someone for their numbers feels like asking them to file a report on work they've already handed over.

Ask. Then ask for far less than you were about to.

What does their screen show that the page doesn't?

We've sorted what you can check into three piles before: what sits on the video's page, what sits in your own records, and what nobody can settle. That sort covers the list you write from the sentence the video had to land. There's something it was never sorting, and it's on a screen you don't have a login for.

One part of that screen crosses over into your question: how the video was watched across its own length. Not how many people arrived, which you already have, but how far into it they got before they moved on, and whether the leaving was concentrated at the start or spread through the middle. It's kept for the person who posted it, so they can work out what to change next time.

For the earplugs: the sentence the video had to land is that they block the street without blocking your alarm. The video opens on the creator's street at night with traffic going past, the earplugs don't go in until twelve seconds, and the alarm doesn't go off until the end. The page tells you the size of the audience the video found. Whether any of that audience was still there at twelve seconds is on their side.

Where does that leave the question you actually asked?

Underneath the question about the message there's an older one: whether the video did the thing you hired it to do. That one gets settled against a sentence you wrote before the shoot, and the sentence is what a posted video gets checked against. Hold the one crossing-over part up against it and the split is sharp.

It answers where. If most people were gone before twelve seconds, then whatever the video was going to demonstrate, most of the audience wasn't present for it. That's a fact about the video's construction, and it's the one thing about this video that only their screen holds. It has somewhere to go: the opening of the next one.

It doesn't answer whether. Nobody's screen reports that a viewer understood the earplugs let an alarm through. If anyone said what they took away, that's where the answer lives, and if nobody did, you don't have one and no screen will produce it. It's silent on two further things you might have hoped for: whether anything moved on your side that week, and whether anyone who ordered did it because of the video. The first belongs to your own records, and the second is the pile nobody can settle.

So it earns its keep in one situation. The comments came back thin, or all about the creator, and the page has told you nothing about your sentence. Then you can't tell a video nobody watched past the opening from a video people watched to the end without taking anything from it. This rules the first one out. It can't confirm the second. What it does is stop you rewriting a sentence for an audience that was never there to read it.

So what do you ask for?

One thing, named in ordinary words, about this video.

How far in were people getting before they dropped off? That's the whole message. It names one thing, so the creator doesn't have to work out which part of their screen you meant, and it doesn't ask them to go and assemble anything.

The version to avoid is the open one. Could you send over your numbers for this? leaves them aiming at a question you never put in the message, and if what comes back misses it, you're writing the message again.

Know what arrives, too. It's a screenshot: a picture of a screen, taken by the person whose screen it is. It shows one thing, on one day, and nothing else is retrievable from it later.

For the earplugs: what comes back is that the drop happens in the first few seconds and then holds flat to the end. Whoever got past those first seconds stayed, so the length of the wait was never what cost you the audience. The seconds before it were.

When do you bring it up?

Before the shoot, in the conversation where you settle everything else.

Not because it's more polite there. Because it's the only point at which it's still a term rather than a favor. For an item on that list that needs the creator to do something, we've said it belongs in the brief and in what you're paying for, because you're asking them to do it. This ask never sat on that list, but the reason carries over. A message sent once the video is already up is a favor, and a favor is fine, but you can't plan around one.

The second reason to raise it early is about your own side. Deciding beforehand gives you the one chance to say what you'd do with the answer while there's still a next video to change. If you can't say that before the shoot, there's nothing waiting for the answer when it arrives.

For the earplugs: this time it was a message four days after posting, and it got answered. Next time the line goes in before filming, with everything else, so nobody has to write it carefully.

What shouldn't you build out of it?

Two temptations. A picture of one screen on one day supports neither.

A column in a table. Run three creators and you'll want to line their drop-off up side by side and read off which one held people longest. You can't. What each cell would hold came out of a different account with a different audience arriving in a different way, under conditions you didn't observe and can't equalize. A table implies a comparison the material can't support.

A lever on money or on the next booking. A drop in the opening is right there in the thread when the invoice comes up, and again when someone asks who to book next. It settles neither. What you owe sits on the thing you agreed to buy, not on how the video did, and the evidence from one job stays with that job. A drop like that is a fact about a video. It says nothing about the person who filmed it.

What's left is one line in the next brief. That's what the ask was for.

For the earplugs: the next brief, whoever ends up filming it, keeps the street and changes how the video opens on it, because that's where you were losing them.

Frequently asked questions

They sent a screenshot without being asked. Does that change what we can do with it?

No. The only difference is that it cost you nothing to get, and nothing above changes for material that showed up on its own.

One thing does change. Somebody sent you something, so there's a reply to write, and a reply that says what you'll do with it is worth more than one that says thanks.

We're running the video as paid media from the creator's handle. Do we still need to ask?

The ads you're running and the post on their account are two different objects, so yes, if you still want to know about the post.

Running the ads from the creator's handle is a separate permission, and it isn't what delivers them. The money behind them does that, from either handle. Either way you're the one paying for them and running them, so results for what you're running come back on your side, and those results describe the ads. The post found its own audience with none of that money behind it, and nothing on your side says how that post was watched.

Which one you need depends on what the next brief is for. If the next video is going behind paid media, your own results already answer for ads. If it's going up on their account to find people the way this one did, only the post can tell you how a post was watched.

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