Read the drop, not your feelings
If most people leave before three seconds, the hook is the problem. If they stay, then fall off at the same spot every time, that spot is a tangent, a dead pause, or a section you love and they do not. If only one video dies, it was the topic or the test audience. If five in a row die the same way, the format is the problem.
- No face, no motion, no words in the first second.
- A preamble: who you are, before why they should care.
- Text that repeats the voiceover word for word, with nothing else happening.
- A topic jump that does not match the cover or the first line.