The Benefits of Long-Form Video Content

It is not true. Our attention span is not decreasing!

Have you ever been given the example of the attention rate of a goldfish when you talk about the fact that people have a very, very low level of concentration since the advent of smartphones?

Well, that’s not true.

The human being has not changed in the last 10 years. Just as it has fundamentally changed very little over the past few centuries.

However, one thing has changed: the offer.

The offer of content, options that we have in our consumption choices.

Every time you spend time on Facebook or any other social network (for example), you can stop at a video or click on an article, but you know consciously that if your choice turns out to be boring, you can start scrolling again in a moment and find something else.

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However, your level of attention has not been affected. It is the fact that you know that you have other options at your disposal that makes you less tolerant than before when it comes to content that is not up to par.

If “before” we watched longer before we dropped out, it was because we couldn’t really be sure that there would be other, better options available to us.

This is no longer the case.

And why am I so sure that our attention span has not been impaired in the last 10 years? We are able to binge watch an ENTIRE season of House of Cards in one weekend.

When it’s good, we stay.

And that’s really where the recipe for human attention lies: the interest in staying.

Want to get your content team up to speed on this? Organize a team workshop or one-on-one coaching with an expert of our team. You can also book Alexandre to come and speak at your event!

So yes, you can produce longer content if you want. Put more “juice” in it, more meat on the bone. Do a deep dive on the subject.

If it’s good, they’ll stay.

Jenny Mudarri, a collaborator with the Wistia platform, has published an article that promotes long-form video content. She cites a very interesting study:

“[…] a 2017 study by video marketing platform Twenty Three showed that 80% of videos surveyed were under 5 minutes, but those short videos drove less than a third of overall video engagement. The 8% of videos that were 15 minutes or longer drove 50% of audience engagement.”

We have here a study showing that we can look for a large number of views on short videos, but deep engagement is unequivocally evident in longer videos.

And producing longer does not mean producing with larger budgets. Our production teams at Toast have demonstrated this many times to several customers.