We’ve always touted the message “shorter videos are better”. They tend to get straight to the point and hold attention better than a drawn-out message. We’ve certainly noticed measured improvements when tightening up our own marketing videos. But are longer videos inherently less engaging than shorter videos?
Now that we have a wealth of video tracking data at our fingertips, we thought we’d put the old “shorter is better” theory to the test.
The Initial Test
We worked with one of our customers who has been testing two variations of the same video. The red line in the graph above represents the engagement of their 30-second video. The blue line is the engagement graph for a 90-second video. It’s expected that these two videos would have different engagement graphs, but what’s odd is that the first 30 seconds of both videos are identical!
Even though viewers were exposed to the same exact content, the drop-off rate of the 90-second video was much higher. By the end of the 30-second video there were about double the number of viewers than at the same point in the 90-second video.
A Wider Look
Our initial test got us thinking. Does this hold true on a larger scale? We decided to look at completion percentages across the thousands of videos we host.
We were right! Shorter videos are more engaging than longer videos, but there are some other unexpected trends. The average 30-second video was viewed 85% of the way through, while the average 2-minute video was viewed on average 50% of the way through. That is a very fast viewership drop-off. But what’s surprising is that the average viewing percentage stays quite consistent for 2-minute videos to 10-minute videos. That means the time spent watching is increasing almost proportionally with the video length during this period. Take a look:
What does this mean?
The data is quite clear, shorter videos are more engaging than longer videos. For videos 2 minutes and under, you should strive to make your content as short and punchy as possible to guarantee the highest engagement. If your video is 30 seconds or under, it’s very likely that most people will watch it all the way through.
If your message is more complex, be comfortable taking the time to explain it, but understand that half of your audience won’t make it to the end of the video. With this in mind, you would be well served to front-load your video with the most important parts of your message.
Understanding the relationship between video length and viewer engagement can help you ensure that your audience is getting the most out of your videos.
Interesting patterns. Could you provide more detailed data about this? Especially: What kinds of videos were these? Instructional? Commercial? Entertainment? Something else? And how many were there? And who were the target audiences?
this is great! i arbitrarily chose 1 min for all of my into videos… looks like it was a good call!
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Very good to know! Thank you for the statistics!
The test was done using the exact same content
However the big unanswered questions are…
Was the opening on both videos identical ?
or
Was the same content just spread out over different time lines?
Long copy sales letters test better than short ones. The more you tell the more you sell. It has proven that long videos also have good conversion rates
So
How did the viewer know the length of the video he or she was watching?
Hi Rory,
Thanks for the comment! The first 30 seconds of each video was identical.
I agree, if that wasn’t the case, this whole exercise wouldn’t be nearly as interesting.
Great insight. Thanks for sharing this. We make videos for businesses and always urge them to go for short and sweet. This data helps us convince them.
[...] have been preaching for short demo reels for a while now. But this study adds actual data to the claim that people don’t watch long videos. What’s most interesting is [...]
I edit tv ads for a living. Many of those ads are reversioned ones from overseas companies. Most markets around the world tend to sell tv ad slots in 15/30sec chunks, but here in the UK you can buy 10/20/30sec slots etc.
So to maximise our spending, we always try to reduce a 30sec ad down to 20 seconds.
In the four+ years i have been doing this, i have not had a single ad that was not improved by removing 10 seconds of material.
Great post. As a producer of workplace training videos, the days of producing traditional 20 to 25 minute length training videos are long gone. Apart from being so time poor, training departments having to compete with other areas of their organisation for staff attention, and not to mention the attention spans of individuals… depending on the content, 3 to 4 minute videos are the most popular and is a formula we know works. We even produced a series of 60 second training videos that companies use for online training.
GREAT data, wonderful results to show my clients! I tell my customers that they are better off leaving viewers hungry for more than being bored and turning off half way. The idea of a promotional video is to get the viewer to make that initial contact. People buy from people not from videos!! A good “call to action” and contact details at the end of short, powerful video is the key!
[...] to this post over at Wistia, user attention rates drop off dramatically as video length increases. We recently started using Wistia to host our videos. They have this great “video heat [...]
[...] A great video begins and ends with a compelling script. As a general rule of thumb, shorter is better. Try to keep your script between 30 and 60 seconds (approximately 75-150 words). For more insight on ideal video length, read Does length matter? It does for video! [...]
[...] Did you know that only 75% will finish watching a one-minute video? And, by two minutes, 50% of your viewers have stopped watching. [...]
Well, it might be the video length, but the audience is at least as (probably more) important in the circumstance you are attempting to to test. Time is one variable, but so is relevance to the viewer.
My guess is that viewers are making a decision on relevance in the first few seconds and assume, if they see the video goes on a bit, it’s not going to get much better and bail. If they see a length that’s short, they are more willing to suffer through till the end.
Watching a shorter video through to the end in no way tells us about the the impact of the piece on the viewer. Having an impact on the viewer is the point. If you have a good story people will watch it. The problem is, many web videos have no compelling story to tell at all.
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It is so hard to make a point in 30 seconds.
Would like to see the same test done with the player controls taken off the player.
If people do not know the amount of time it may/should be a longer engagement
cheers
Jonathan
ps
Another way to do it is put 2+ videos together and have each video be 30 seconds. Then have them loop to the next video in the “series”
Finally, some data to share with clients who think that a 15 minute video is better than a 10 minute video. I found it very interesting that the percentage completion was about the same between 2 and 10 minutes and I appreciate the logic of front-end loading the video, rather than saving it for the end.
I guess the old saying holds true for video: “Tell them what you are going to tell them, then tell them, and then tell them what you told them”.
Thanks WISTIA!
Thanks for sharing – this will be discussed at our group this month meetup.com/atlyoutube – this is why I dont waste 9 secs on an intro but dive right in with the content.
Good to find some solid data on this topic (as opposed to speculation and heresay). I personally always try keep my videos under 3 minutes (which can be tricky of course), but it does correlate with this data in terms of effectiveness.
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Definitely agree that getting straight to the point is necessary. Obviously context of where the video is found is going to effect what kind of experience the user is after to begin with.
[...] You may convince yourself that 10-20 additional seconds is necessary in your particular message, and you may be right. But remember that we have been conditioned for these types of shorter messages. Typically any longer, and we’ll stop paying attention. For more information on this, check out these interesting facts. [...]
As a creator of animated web videos, LaunchSpark Video always recommends a 30-90 second video. The content has to be EXTREMELY engaging for anything longer than that. This is for explainer and promotional web videos; instructionals and tutorials can be longer, with the length depending on the use and audience.