You Have 10 Seconds
Agitator readers know I’m a big fan of online video as a fundraising tool (just Search the site for “online video”).
The good news is that the sheer volume of online video viewing is staggering and growing. According to comScore, as of September, 175 million US internet users (84% of the total US online universe) watched an average of 14.4 hours of online video in the month … or 5.2 billion viewing sessions. YouTube, Yahoo and Facebook drove the bulk of the viewing.
Online video ads reached 45% of the US population, with 4.3 billion ads viewed.
But now for the bad news. Actually capturing the attention of viewers to deliver a high impact message is a major challenge.
As reported by VidBlog, Visible Measures studied online viewing behavior across 40 million unique clips that added up to 7 billion video views … a decent sample.
They found that 20% of the audience for a video clip of under five minutes will abandon viewing in the first 10 seconds. You will have lost 33% of your audience in the first 30 seconds. And 44% by the end of the first minute!
And people leave a 30-second clip just as rapidly as they do a two-minute clip. So shorter isn’t inherently better.
So, yes, video is a powerful tool. But a successful online fundraising video must do a terrific job of engaging the viewer right up front … set your hook as powerfully as you can, as fast as you can. Indeed, the best course might be to tell your entire story within a minute, then extend the presentation only to provide amplification or detail.
[In DRTV, two-minute commercial appeals have been the winning formula historically from an ROI standpoint. And the most effective 30-minute infomercials deliver their pitch in short repetitive cycles.]
To put video “abandonment” in perspective, however, what percentage of prospects never even open the direct mail piece or the email message?!
Tom
Behavioral Science Q & A
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