LinkedIn and Meta Launch New Dwell Time Metric: What You Need To Know
Dwell time is a metric gaining momentum for its ability to reveal how long users actually spend with content, uncovering what keeps people engaged.
While it offers a promising way to assess how effectively content captures attention, like any metric, it comes with its own caveats. In this article, we break down what Dwell Time really tells us, how platforms like LinkedIn and Meta are integrating it, and where its limitations lie.
What is Dwell Time?
Dwell time measures the amount of time a user spends viewing a piece of content. It can be a valuable indicator of user engagement and measure of how well content holds attention.
Dwell time has traditionally been used in web analytics to track how long a visitor stays on a page after clicking through from search results, before returning to the search engine. This helps marketers assess the relevance of the webpages content and how effectively it captures user interest.
Digital out-of-home (DOOH) advertisers also use dwell time, particularly as measuring results is more challenging than in other digital environments. DOOH utilises technologies including cameras, motion sensors, mobile device location data, and eye-tracking technology to provide an estimate of audience attention time.
Now, social media platforms are starting to catch up. LinkedIn and Meta are introducing dwell time metrics in their ads managers, recognising that simply measuring clicks or impressions no longer provides a complete picture of engagement.
Why It Matters
For advertisers, dwell time opens up opportunities to optimise for attention rather than just visibility or interactions. Ads that hold attention for longer can signal stronger creative, more relevant messaging, or better placement, all factors that can drive long-term brand lift and conversions.
There are also strategic implications for content and creative. Understanding which assets hold attention can inform whether brands should invest in longer-form storytelling, richer visuals, or more interactive formats. With more accurate signals about what captures and sustains interest, marketers can make smarter decisions across creative development, media buying, and campaign optimisation.
How Dwell Time Differs from Traditional Metrics
While metrics such as impressions, clicks, and likes indicate surface-level visibility of user action, they do not tell us how long someone actually spent with a piece of content and cannot reflect sustained attention.
Dwell time helps bridge this gap by showing how long a creative asset holds a viewer’s attention, providing an additional layer of insight. It captures passive engagement in instances where users choose to consume content without taking further action.
Social Platforms Embracing Dwell Time
Leading social platforms are beginning to factor dwell time into their ad reporting, offering a richer view of user engagement.
While LinkedIn announced its Average Dwell Time metric last year, it only became visible in our Campaign Manager in March, suggesting a phased rollout across advertisers.
LinkedIn defines its new Average Dwell Time metric as the “time spent viewing the ad when at least 50% of the pixels are present on the screen,” with the results displayed in seconds. This simple but telling measure helps identify which creative assets are effectively holding attention, even when users do not interact directly with the ad.
This metric has quickly become a valuable indicator of quality content and relevance on LinkedIn, capturing the engagement of users who choose to read or view content without actively engaging through likes and comments.
To access this new metric in LinkedIn Campaign Manager, navigate to the ‘Advertise’ tab, then select your campaign and choose the ‘Engagement’ columns set. From there, you can find ‘Average Dwell Time’ listed alongside other performance indicators.
Meta
Meta has a similar dwell-based metric currently in development, which will measure “the number of times your display ad is completely visible or covers at least 50% of someone’s screen for at least seven seconds”.
While it shares LinkedIn’s threshold of 50% visibility to qualify, Meta’s approach differs significantly. Rather than reporting on the average time spent viewing an ad, Meta will only report the number of instances where that view lasts seven seconds or more. This significantly limits the granularity of insight by simply counting whether a view passes the seven-second mark or not, overlooking valuable shorter interactions that can still indicate meaningful engagement.
Limitations
While dwell time is increasingly used as a measure of user attention, it has several limitations to be aware of when evaluating ad performance:
- Passive attention is not true engagement: Dwell time measures how long an ad remains on screen, but this doesn’t guarantee the viewer is actively looking at or absorbing the content. Just because someone lingers on an ad doesn’t mean they are engaging with it cognitively. Users might be distracted, scrolling slowly, or have simply put their phone down. All of these inflate dwell time without indicating actual engagement.
- Partial visibility limits impact: With platforms counting views when just 50% of an ad is on screen, there’s no guarantee the key message or brand is seen. Creative should take this into account, making sure the most important elements are instantly visible and memorable, even if only a portion of the ad is seen.
- Difficult cross-platform comparison: Each platform defines and measures dwell time differently. LinkedIn calculates the average in seconds, while Meta plans to only report the number of views exceeding a set duration. These inconsistencies make it unreliable as a benchmark across platforms. Furthermore, the absence of unified measurement forces marketers to rely on platform-reported data, with limited external verification or visibility.
- No insight into intent or outcomes: High dwell time doesn’t necessarily translate into clicks, conversions, or any action beyond passive exposure. It lacks visibility into whether the viewer was interested enough to engage further.
Key Takeaways
As platforms evolve and advertisers look for richer insights into user behaviour, dwell time offers a compelling lens into how content performs in an increasingly attention-scarce environment. Social platforms are beginning to embrace dwell time as a meaningful engagement metric, reflecting a broader shift toward measuring attention rather than just interactions.
But it’s not a silver bullet. Dwell time captures a form of passive engagement, not intent or action, and inconsistent definitions across platforms make it difficult to compare or benchmark. Still, it offers value as an in-channel signal that can help inform more effective creative messaging within each platform’s unique context.
At ADMATIC, we operate on holistic views of performance, using a unified measurement approach to determine campaign effectiveness. This ecosystem of measurement relies on third-party party attribution and is supported by a variety of data sources and methodologies; including but not limited to onsite analytics, in-channel conversion optimisation, scientific experimentation, and hygiene factors such as viewability. We will be incorporating dwell time as a creative quality signal to help evaluate ad effectiveness and guide smarter optimisation decisions.
Metrics like dwell time offer valuable insights, but they’re just one part of a broader picture. At ADMATIC, we help connect the dots to turn data into decisions that drive real results. Reach out to get in touch with an ADMATICian today.
