Absolute audience retention

Read left to right, the curve starts at the opening frame and falls as viewers leave, and every point on it is measured against the video's own views. That is what makes it absolute: it describes what happened inside this video, with no comparison to anything else. Relative retention is the other reading, where the same video is set against others of a similar length.

Shape matters more than the final number. A spike marks a moment being replayed, a flat run means people are settled, and a cliff points at the sentence where a group of viewers decided to go. Reading it needs the video open alongside the graph, because a drop only means something once you can see what was on screen.