How to “Get Away” With Longer Online Videos

In the early days of the web, I often heard, “If it’s longer than five minutes, forget it!”

There were a lot of factors that went into this notion but the primary notion was that online viewers did not have the same amount of patience with content than off-line video viewers.

Part of this had to do with player load times. In 2006, if the video was 10 minutes it took way too long, at times, to load. In those days it was also obvious that everyone was just getting their brains wrapped around actually watching content easily online. The web was snack-sized, so web video was also.

Fast-forward to 2013. I now watch feature length films on my iPhone (don’t tell David Lynch!), 33% of tablet owners watch an hour or more video a day and we’ve all lost count of how many of hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute.

Once you throw streaming live events, particularly sports, and platforms like Netflix and Hulu, the average time a video is watched has skyrocketed.

To be clear, I’m not saying to make a really long video. However, compared to the ‘good old days’ of online video, you don’t have to be any particular length at all!

Instead, tell your story. Let that dictate the length of the video.

This comes with one critical caveat. You must hold these two contradictory things in your mind at the same time:

• People will watch engaging video longer than they used to, so content doesn’t have to be just a few minutes long
• People still don’t watch long videos online, so content should be just a few minutes long.

I know, sounds a bit crazy, right? It would be if you were trying to create a video for one audience. In this context, though you’re really making it for two audiences – those that will stick with a video and those that will bail in the first minute.

Make sure the first 1-2 minutes of your video is extremely compelling and has a clear call to action. That way, if your audience bails on you, you got your message across. For those that stick around, you can now dive deeper into the information you’re trying to convey!