Guide
Three seconds is eight words, and none of them sell
Three seconds of normal speech is about eight words. That is the whole hook. It is not enough room to describe a product, a brand or a benefit. Here are the six shapes that do fit in eight words, four weak openings rewritten line by line, and the rule that decides whether yours survives a muted feed. You will finish with six openings written rather than one polished.
- What three seconds of normal speech actually fits
- 8 words
- Openings worth recording in one sitting
- 6
- Words per second in a natural spoken read
- 2.5
A hook is not a summary, it is a reason not to leave
A viewer in a feed decides whether to keep scrolling before they have understood what your ad is about. So the hook is not a value proposition. It is not a summary either.
Every sentence in a short ad exists to buy the next sentence. The first one is hardest. It has no context to lean on and no goodwill banked.
That reframe kills the two most common failures on contact. Openings that describe the product. Openings that describe the brand. Both assume attention nobody has earned yet.
Ten-second test. Read your first sentence to somebody who has never heard of your company. If they look like they are waiting politely for the point, you wrote a preamble. If they ask a question, you wrote a hook.
How long you actually have
The decision to scroll happens inside the first bar. Everything you planned lives in the last one.
- The scroll decision0.5 sec
- The hook3 sec
- The whole ad30 sec
Six shapes, and using six of them is the point
These are the underlying moves rather than templates. A good hook is one of them said in your own words.
Work down the list rather than picking a favourite. Six openings that are six versions of the contradiction produce six similar numbers and one wasted week.
Six openings using six different shapes will spread out. The spread is the information you paid for.
Say each one out loud as you write it. A shape that sounds natural in your mouth is one you can record twelve times without going flat. The recording session is where most hook plans die.
- The contradiction. State what the viewer believes, then break it. 'Everyone says to post more. Posting more is why this stopped working.'
- The named audience. Say who this is for so precisely that the right person feels addressed. 'If you run ads on under a thousand a month, this is the part nobody explains.'
- The specific number. Numbers imply somebody counted. 'We spent eleven thousand on a launch that produced four sales.'
- The demonstration. Show the thing happening before you say a word. Physical products win here and rarely use it.
- The confession. Admit the flaw first. 'This costs more than the alternatives. Here is when it is still worth it.'
- The question they already asked. Repeat the sentence from your support inbox. 'Does this work on curly hair, or is that the packaging talking?'
How many words your opening actually fits
At two and a half words a second. If your hook needs fifteen words, it is a paragraph.
- 2 seconds5 words
- 3 seconds8 words
- 5 seconds13 words
This is the whole editor
Highlight a phrase and a clip lands on those exact words. No timeline, no keyframes, no layers.
Four rewrites, and every one of them gets shorter
Weak: 'Introducing our new all-in-one skincare system.' It describes the product and asks a stranger to care about a launch. Rewrite as the confession: 'This has four steps. I do two of them and it still works.'
Weak: 'We help busy founders save time on content.' Generic audience, generic benefit, no image. Rewrite as the specific number: 'Last month I recorded one video and got twelve ads out of it.'
Weak: 'Tired of expensive video editing?' A rhetorical question with an obvious answer teaches the viewer the rest will be predictable. Rewrite as the contradiction: 'A cheaper editor did not fix my ads. Shipping more of them did.'
Weak: 'Our customers love the results.' A claim about a claim, nobody attached, nothing checkable. Rewrite as the question they already asked: 'Three people this week asked whether this works on hard water.'
Every improvement moves from category language to a first-person, concrete, checkable statement. Every one gets shorter too. The padding was where the category language hid.
The same four openings, before and after
Cross out any word that could appear in a competitor's ad, then put a number, a name or a date in the gap.
| What was written first | What went on camera | |
|---|---|---|
| Skincare launch | Introducing our new all-in-one system | This has four steps. I do two of them |
| Content tool | We help busy founders save time | One video last month became twelve ads |
| Editing service | Tired of expensive video editing? | A cheaper editor did not fix my ads |
| Social proof | Our customers love the results | Three people this week asked about hard water |
It has to work with the sound off, and it has to be true to the body
If the first line only lands as audio, most of the feed never hears it. Get the words on screen. Check the first frame alone is intriguing.
A hook that promises a revelation the ad never delivers buys attention and spends it on annoyance. Over time that damages the account rather than the ad.
Keep it short. Two and a half words per second is a normal read. Three seconds is seven or eight words. Fifteen words is a paragraph.
Read your six openings to the wall before you film them. The one that makes you wince is written rather than spoken. A viewer hears that in the cadence.
Check how the line breaks across caption cards as well. In a muted feed the words are read before they are heard. A hook split awkwardly across two cards arrives as half a sentence.
Six openings should cost about what one used to
Record all six back to back in one take while your voice is still warm. That part is twenty minutes with a phone.
Then Cutroom turns that take into six finished ads. One recording of up to three minutes goes in. You trim the opening. You write the headline, or pick one it drafted. Then you export a finished 9:16 MP4 at 20 credits per output minute.
Six thirty-second variants is about 60 credits against 2,500 a month on Basic. Nowhere else does the sixth variant cost the same as the first, because everywhere else it is priced as a job or an evening.
The captions come from your own audio, so the wording on screen is the wording you said. Emphasise a word and it pops in the captions, which is how a hook survives a muted feed.
The facts to plan around. Somebody has to be on camera. Three minutes is the ceiling. Every export is a 9:16 MP4, and there is no timeline underneath, so a blinked first frame is a re-record.
None of that touches the eight words. Those are still found at a kitchen table with a pen, and they are the only part of this page that takes talent.
Questions people ask
- How long should a hook be?
- About three seconds, which is seven or eight spoken words. The constraint is useful. Almost every weak hook gets stronger when you are forced to cut it to eight words, because the padding goes first.
- Should the hook mention the product?
- Usually not in the first sentence. The product is what you are selling, not what buys attention. One exception: if the product itself is visually surprising, showing it in motion is a legitimate hook on its own.
- How many hooks should I test per concept?
- Six is a good session target, because you can record six openings against the same body in one sitting. Hooks vary more in performance than any other layer, so a small production budget buys the most information here.
- Do trending audio hooks still work?
- They buy a moment of familiarity and they age badly, which makes them a poor foundation for anything you want to run for months. Treat them as a supplement to a hook that stands on its own words.
- Who should stop reading and buy something else?
- Anyone whose ads have no spoken opening at all. A silent product montage is a first frame and a caption, so use a motion tool. Everything here assumes somebody says the eight words out loud.
Write six openings, not one. Record them back to back and each comes back as a finished vertical ad, which is why six now costs about what one used to.