The online video sweetspot: 2.7 minutes

David Johnson September 14th, 2007

According comscore’s recent numbers, U.S. viewers watched an average of 3 hours of video online during July. Google commanded 27 percent of that audience. No surprise to observant Lost Remoters, the average length of the videos is 2.7 minutes. When I think about online video now, I keep thinking about the analogy to 45 rpm singles on AM radio. Where broadband is to online video what FM was to broadcast audio, I expect longer, more engaging experiences to start creeping into the quick spins now that we’re measuring session length as well as page views: Finished video pieces of news magazine length but designed straight for the web that are smartly embedded with text, data interfaces and drill-down resources.