The New Trend is Longer Videos
Wired has a story about how YouTube is moving away from the short-attention span videos of yesterday to longer-form videos.
That might seem counterintuitive. Not so long ago, YouTube videos resembled long-form Vines more than anything approaching a 22-minute sitcom. But as more people watch video via mobile, the lines between highly produced television show and a rough YouTube vlog have blurred. These days smartphone users spend a whopping 54 percent of their video-viewing time on videos over 20 minutes long—that’s up from just 29 percent in the beginning of 2016.
The main reason seems to be that it’s easier to put ads on longer videos, but it also seems that if you have a compelling story, people will watch, even if it’s more than a few minutes.