Report: Viewers saving more video content to watch later

To date 'shorter is better' has been the mantra of video advertisers, who believe consumers don't have time to watch more than a few, short clips of content at a time. But that mantra may be changing fast. According to new data from ReadItLater video 'saves' are up more than 135% (Year over Year). 

Those 'saves' are ways that viewers mark content to save it to watch when they have more time to engage. The ReadItLater app allows users to save content from magazines or newspapers as well as video content; their new report shows YouTube as the leading domain from which people are saving content for later consumption.

What's more, they aren't only saving highlights from the big game or the latest headlines; the average length of a saved video in their system was 30 minutes, says the company.

"It's been widely accepted that video on the web should 'keep it short,' but that might be changing in a time-shifted world. When we looked at the 1,000 most popular videos from July through December, 32% of the Top 1,000 videos were over 5 minutes long, and the median length was 29 min., 33 seconds," was written in the report. "[We're] seeing evidence that users will embrace longform video if given the tools to do so in a way that fits with their daily lives. Of course, with 68% of videos saved under 5 minutes, short-form still rules: As our Most-Saved Videos list shows (see below), users love to save everything from music videos to animation, movie trailers, news clips and more. Shorter clips also represent the vast majority of video content produced for the web."

In February comScore reports more than 147 unique users (US) watched online video content, streaming more than 35 billion clips. As for ad content, more than 7 billion video ads were viewed.

by Kristina Knight

http://www.bizreport.com