Thumb-stop ratio
The proportion of impressions that turned into someone pausing rather than scrolling past.
Usually calculated as three-second video plays over impressions, the same arithmetic as hook rate, and the two terms are often used interchangeably. Where they are distinguished, this one is the broader idea and applies to static creative as well.
Why it matters for HVAC
It is the first gate. Everything downstream, the offer, the form, the follow-up, is irrelevant to someone who never stopped. Creative work in this trade mostly fails here rather than at persuasion.
What stops a homeowner is rarely a headline. It is recognition: a street they know, a season they are in, a failure they have had, a face that looks like someone who would turn up.
How it is measured
Compare within an ad set over the same period, because it moves with placement and audience as well as with the creative. Comparing across ad sets or across months mostly measures the auction.
A worked example
Four creatives in one ad set: 34%, 29%, 22% and 7%. The weakest opens on a company logo over a stock photograph of a family. Reshot to open on a corroded heat exchanger in a technician’s hand, it reaches 31% with the same offer and the same targeting behind it.
These figures are invented to show the arithmetic. They describe no real business.
Where this is demonstrated
The Creative production pillar scores every listed agency on what they document here, and gives you the questions that tell you which one you are being sold.