Longer forms of video content drive higher content, according to a new report published by marketing enterprise TwentyThree. While social media platforms have driven a trend towards shorter, bite-sized clips in recent years, videos with a runtime of 15 minutes or more deliver better results and metrics for brands.
TwentyThree’s study was extensive. It looked at more than one and a half million videos across video platforms, including social sites, in an attempt to dispel creative myths and provide more relevant insights to content creation teams and marketers.
According to the State of Online Video in 2017 study, 80 per cent of videos published are less than five minutes long, but these shorter formats actually drive less than a third of engagement for all videos, which is perhaps surprising considering that Internet users now consume so much content online.
Mid- and long-form videos performed much better for brands. Those with a 15-minute run time drive more than half of total engagement, despite the fact that they make up just eight per cent of videos published. Longer clips are generally streams of live events, webinars and tutorials.
Live video is arguably the most effective tool for driving awareness and reach, as engagement is 300 per cent higher compared to non-live content. However, more than two-thirds of watch time now takes place after the live event has occurred, which suggests that more consumers are open to catching up on longer forms of content.
The study also noted a trend towards people favouring hosted video. Those on Facebook watch videos that they clicked for just 20 seconds, but this figure increases to an impressive four minutes when a video was available on a company’s website. TwentyThree’s Chief Technology Officer, Steffen Christensen, added that marketers can use the data to make better decisions about what content and platforms to use to drive maximum engagement.
“If you make longer videos, there’s more time to engage with them,” Christensen said. “People are worried about what amount of impressions they can get, but tracking video success needs to be different. There isn’t a magic number of seconds to hit.”
