The length of the average web video has grown by 20% since 2010. Since our last video survey the average web video has grown from 270 seconds (4.5 minutes) to 5.4 minutes (324 seconds) in December 2012 (Comscore 2013). Figure 1 shows the growth of the average web video since 1997.
Figure 1: Growth of Average Web Video Duration
Web Video Duration Growth Shrinking?
The 5.4 minute length that Comscore reported in December 2012 is actually down from October, when the average web video was 6.1 minute long. Google sites continue to top the video usage charts, with 153 million unique viewers, followed by Facebook.com with 58.8 million, VEVO with 51.6 million, NDN with 49.9 million and Yahoo! Sites with 47.5 million. Americans viewed 11.3 billion video ads in December, with Google Sites ranking first with nearly 2 billion ads.
Conclusion
As bandwidth continues to improve, the size of the average web video continues to increase. Videos are a great way to engage viewers, and have been shown to increase conversion rates. To be most effective however, videos should be optimized for web viewing and search optimized. A fat, unoptimized video with no captions or descriptive text will fare worse than a trim, SEO optimized video surrounded by descriptive captions.
Further Reading
- Average Web Video Triples Since 2003
- The size of the average web video has more than tripled since 2003. We survey the video landscape to show that the size, duration, quality, and usage of the mean web video has grown significantly over time. August 2011 Bandwidth Report.
- Comscore December 2012 Video Rankings
- Comscore’s monthly Video Metrix service found that 182 million U.S. Internet users watched 38.7 billion online content videos in December, while video ad views totaled 11.3 billion. Jan. 2013.
- Video Statistics
- Interesting video statistics from Invodo.