Engagement Stickiness Rate (ESR)
Engagement Stickiness Rate, or ESR, measures what share of your engagements were deep rather than drive-by.
Divide deep engagements by gross engagements. That is ESR: of everyone who engaged, who actually stayed? It matters because raw engagement counts flatter clickbait. This separates the audience that consumed from the audience that merely touched.
Signal Type
Metric Role
Metric Type
The Formula
Worked example
Benchmarks and interpretation
Where the number actually comes from
When to use it
Common Mistakes
In the REACT framework
ESR is the Engage phase depth gauge. High engagement rate with low ESR is clickbait's exact signature: working as designed, building nothing. It shows which formats earn attention and which harvest reflexes.
Related metrics
Frequently Asked Questions
What is Engagement Stickiness Rate?
Engagement Stickiness Rate, or ESR, measures what share of your engagements were deep rather than drive-by. It separates the audience that consumed from the audience that merely touched.
How do you calculate Engagement Stickiness Rate?
Use the formula: ESR = (Deep Engagements [>15s or Max Scroll] ÷ Gross Engagements) × 100. Keep both inputs in the same reporting period and avoid mixing users, sessions, events, or customers unless the formula calls for it.
What data do you need for ESR?
You need gross engagements and stuck engagements, pulled from the relevant connected sources and computed for the same period.
What mistakes should you avoid with ESR?
The trap is celebrating engagement volume while stickiness falls, the exact signature of clickbait. Also keep the deep-engagement definition stable, or the trend means nothing.
When should marketers use ESR?
Use ESR when choosing formats and topics. It tells you which content earns held attention and which harvests reflexes, and only one of those is worth building a strategy on.
What is a good ESR?
Good is judged within format against your own history. The pattern to hunt: formats where deep engagement share rises while volume holds, which is substance winning.
Sources and methodology. ESR formula and definition derive from standard marketing analytics practice and platform reporting conventions. REACTIQ360 harmonises source data from Platform APIs, Content taxonomy, Harmonisation layer and applies a consistent same-period computation methodology.
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