News: Online Viewers Attention Span Very Short

Since online is becoming more and more a part of our daily lives in the newsroom business, it might be helpful to keep in mind some basic research to make your efforts most beneficial.

In short, brevity is best!

Advertisers who buy online post-roll ads may want to read this. Online video distribution/measurement service Tube Mogul studied the issue of follow thorough, measuring what percentage of videos clicked on are actually watched until the end. A sample of 188,055 videos on 6 top sites (YouTube was not one of them) found that 10.39% of viewers clicked away after just 10 seconds and that over half of the audience left after one minute.

The longer the video, the quicker erosion; all but 16.62% of the audience left the building by the end of a 3-minute clip. Tube Mogul notes that the research indicates that overlay ads should also be placed as early as possible within the video stream.

Audience Attention Span

Video length    % of Audience who watched the entire video
10 sec.                   89.61%
20 sec.                   80.41%
30 sec.                   66.16%
60 sec.                   46.44%
 2 min.                   23.71%
 3 min.                   16.62% 
 5 min.                    9.42%

Source: Tube Mogul & Cynposis

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