Research has shown that B2B marketers are brimming with enthusiasm about video. But creating a video is different from having it viewed – and viewed long enough for the message to get across. New video benchmarks from Vidyard [download page] offer insights into completion rates for business-related videos, and the results are encouraging.
While the average length of a business-related video in 2017 (on Vidyard’s platform) was found to be 9 minutes, the vast majority (76%) of videos produced by businesses are 2 minutes or less in length, with 54% being up to a minute long and another 22% being 1-2 minutes long. This marks a significant shift from 2016, when just 21% of business-related videos were 0-1 minutes in length, a change that Vidyard believes suggests that “B2B video creators are taking note of shrinking attention spans, as well as shifting audience expectations, and adjusting their content to match.”
Not surprisingly, shorter videos hold viewers’ attention the most: those less than 90 seconds long had a completion rate of 59% in 2017, up from 53% in 2016. That compares to a 14% completion rate for the longest videos (at least 30 minutes), which nonetheless represents an improvement from 2016’s completion rate of 10%.
In fact, completion rates – which averaged 46% across all video types examined in the report – were higher in 2017 than in 2016 for videos of all lengths.
The study does reveal a substantial drop-off in video engagement at the start of a business-related video, particularly for the lengthiest ones. For videos at least half an hour in length, only 59% of viewers make it to the 10% mark. This is, however, a marked improvement from 2016, when just 39% of viewers made it one-tenth of the way.
Retention rates are far higher for shorter videos: even those 10-30 minutes in length retain 78% of their viewers through the first 10% of the video.
In other results from the study:
- Business-related video views are highest in the middle of the week, with Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays each seeing about 18% share of weekly views;
- Business video consumption tends to occur between the hours of 7AM and 11AM PST, though peak hours are a little later on Mondays and Fridays;
- The most popular time of the week for viewing business-related videos is Tuesday morning; and
- Fully 89% of business-related video views occur on desktops, a figure that actually grew from 84% in 2016.
About the Data: The data is first-party data collected from the Vidyard video platform from more than 600 businesses and more than 250,000 videos in a 12 month period.
