What's the perfect length for a video?
It's a question we get asked a lot:
It's pretty well known that attention span has an impact on content and video marketing. A survey by SumoMe showed that out of 650,000 sessions only 20% of people read an article from start to finish.
Using a load of customer data, video hosting company Wistia found some interesting tidbits after analysing a huge amount of data from videos on their platform.
Watch it or leave it?
What they found was really interesting. We all know most humans have short attention spans, but they looked at video length vs. engagement.
We'd expect engagement to decrease with length of video, so more people are likely to watch a 1 minute video than a 2 minute one, but you'd also think that increasing a video from 1 minute to 2 minutes (100% longer) would have a massive difference in engagement than the jump from 10 minutes to 11 minutes. (10% change)
If you want to get a bit mathematical - we'd all think it would look a little like this on a graph.
The folks over at Wistia have a HUGE amount of data to look at. They looked at 564,710 videos and move then 1.3 BILLION plays of these videos.
This is what they found:
2 minutes is the sweet spot.
You can see from that graph that after 2 minutes the engagement starts to drop off and it's pretty significant.
From the results, it's pretty interesting. A 90 second video will hold a viewer's attention as much as a 30 second video. What this means is that you don't need to worry about having slightly longer video, just make sure it's under 2 minutes.
Want a bit more length?
Every second is critical between 2 and 6 minutes, but the graph shows there's hardly any drop off between 6 and 12 minutes, so if you have a video thats 8 minutes long instead of 7 minutes the chances are it won't have much effect on engagement.
You're losing them.
Videos should be as long as they need to be, but if you're going to be making a film that's over 12 minutes long then it's likely to be more of a documentary or tutorial style, and the viewers expect the video to be longer.
BUT - every minute beyond 12 minutes you WILL lose people, and although the drop-off isn't as steep as the 2 to 6 minute drop, it's important for you to consider because longer films are more expensive and time-consuming to make.
We can do this.
We know video. We know what works and we know how you can make it work for your businesses. Take a look at some of our projects.
