More People Watching Longer Videos Online
By Anna Johnson on July 23rd, 2009Ken McCarthy recently posted an article questioning – or rather, putting a new perspective on – the conventional thinking that viewership of online videos drops off dramatically after two minutes.
Ken makes the point that, of course viewership drops off at the beginning of an online video… simply because the video probably doesn’t appeal to the majority of people who started watching it. Those interested will continue watching and the rest will drop off.
As we know from conversion rates, click-through rates and open rates in other contexts, the broader the audience, the lower the percentage of people who will likely be ‘qualified’ to take, from a marketer’s perspective, the ‘most desired action’ (MDA) – whether it’s watching a video, opting in, buying something, or doing something else.
In any case, recent statistics reveal that the average length of online video watched has increased in recent times. Ken McCarthy points out that while last year the top 25 shows on blip.tv averaged under five minutes, this year the average length was 14 minutes.
Meanwhile, in another indication that people are increasingly embracing longer online videos, Netflix has released 12,000 feature length films to its customers for instant streaming.
Of course, with the integration of TV sets and the Internet now a reality for a growing number of people, the issue of someone being willing to watch a long online video on their computer will become moot. They won’t be watching it on their PC; they’ll be watching it on their TV.
Where does that leave Internet marketers using video to sell their products and services?
Well, I don’t think we’re at the point where a prospect is necessarily going to watch the average video embedded into a salesletter or online store on their computer. Chances are, they’ll still be sitting at their computer.
It only makes sense, however, that they’ll be willing to watch a video for as long as it maintains their interest.
Which means you don’t need to keep your video to any particular length of time, just as you don’t need to keep your salesletter to any particular length. As Ken McCarthy expresses in his post: DUH!
Similarly, don’t worry about the majority of viewers dropping off your videos at the start. The majority also click off salesletter pages too. The main thing is that you keep your most qualified prospects interested and taking those MDAs.
Source: Ken McCarthy, “Monetizing videos – long videos,” System Video Blog, July 18, 2009
