Viewer Engagement: Does Video Length Matter?
Yes it does. And it should matter to you. The videos you publish on your website or blog help gather steam for your product or service and the longer your audience is engaged, the better are your chances of obtaining and preserving their interest in your subject. This is especially true if you place an end of video call to action in your video. In this case, you’ll want to keep your viewer engaged to the very end. Understanding how the length of video affects your viewer engagement is critical to a successful video.
We focused exclusively on videos used for product and service marketing. For obvious reasons, we did not study long content videos such as religious services, sporting and other types of events. We also did not study paid content where the viewer has skin in the game. Our study was all about product marketing.
The data was aggregated from almost one million views over the last four years. The results were not surprising: We consistently found that the longer the video, the less likely the video was watched to the very end.
Shorter is better.
If you glean anything from this data, engaging your audience means keeping your message as concise as possible, while putting the most compelling information as early as possible in your video and using the balance of the time supporting that information. Here’s a tip: To see how the smartest marketers create engaging content, watch – really watch – those online ads you see all of the time on the Web. ComScore says the average online video ad is 24 seconds long. That is a short amount of time to engage a viewer. I suggest you drill into those for great ideas on increasing your viewer engagement and attention.
Cheers.
Wes