Marketers assumed B2B products were too dry for social video. Billo’s analysis of 88,000+ Meta ads shows the category outperformed nearly every consumer group.
September 30, 2026. A new analysis by social media marketing company Billo shows that B2B ads are often more watched than B2C ones. In an analysis of more than 88K Meta video ads, B2B posted a 28.7% hook rate (the share of viewers who kept watching past an ad’s opening seconds). The only category that showed better results was Toys & Games (28.8% hook rate).
Furthermore, in March, the B2B category hit 33%, the highest monthly hook rate any category recorded.
“B2B being too dry for social video is one of the most expensive assumptions in marketing, and the data just doesn’t back it up. B2B ads held attention better than almost every consumer category we tracked this year. It just takes a longer time for B2B videos to convert. B2B clients watch ads and come back weeks later once the budget clears, or a team signs off. And brands that misread this as a failure are missing their opportunities to earn,” said Donatas Smailys, co-founder and CEO of Billo.
Most visual categories fell behind
The product types traditionally seen as most suited to video were not the ones that held attention best. Apparel & Accessories and Electronics, two of the most visual categories in the dataset, stayed below the cross-industry average (25.44%) in all six months, at 22.9% and 22.2%.
Categories with little to put on screen moved the other way. B2B stayed above the cross-industry average every month, and in March it reached 33%, the highest any category reached in any month.
“Being easy to film isn’t the same as being worth watching. When every ad in a category opens on the same product shot, viewers scroll past all of them. B2B brands can’t lean on the product, so they have to open on the problem or the person, and this year that paid off,” said Smailys.
What B2B businesses can do
Treat video as a format that can earn attention, not one to skip. A few practical starting points:
- Show a real person, not only the product. B2B video requires less unboxing and demonstrating than consumer video, so the presenter often leads.
- A good hook still needs a good hold. The hook rate shows who stops scrolling, whereas the hold rate shows who continues watching after the video starts, a better indicator of whether the message is actually getting through.
- Skip the internal jargon. If the hook is built on an inside term or acronym, anyone outside the category loses interest within three seconds.
- Speak to more than one buyer. A B2B purchase usually needs sign-off from several people, so the video has to hold up even when it’s forwarded to someone who never saw the original pitch.
- Keep the message consistent from hook to landing page. Having a strong opening gets attention, but if the offer or message changes once someone clicks through, the trust built in those first seconds is quickly destroyed.
Methodology
The findings are drawn from 88,329 sales-objective Meta video ads that ran between January and June 2026, each with more than 1,000 impressions. The dataset spans $122 million in ad spend and $212 million in purchase value across 14 categories defined by advertiser product type. More: https://billo.app/blog/h1-