Ideal Length for Different Types of Video Ads

Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube all have different guidelines for length. Here are some of the ideal/recommended lengths:

Facebook:

Generally in 10 to 15 seconds, no longer than 20 seconds. Facebook has been leaning towards shorter videos on their platform; however, those shorter videos still perform better than longer ones with a 1% decrease in organic reach for every 100 characters after a video's title and description.

Instagram:

When it comes to Instagram Stories and ads, it’s important to keep your viewers engaged for as long as possible. This means keeping things short and sweet—no one wants to see an ad they don’t understand or that takes too long to get its point across. It is recommended to keep Instagram Stories between 15 and 30 seconds—any more than that, you risk losing your audience! Also remember that since you can only upload 60 second videos to IGTV, use that format when you need additional time! When planning out how long your Instagram video ads should be, take into account that you want to give people enough content to be intrigued, but not so much that they leave because there isn't enough payoff. That’s why it is generally suggested including a call-to-action at about 20 seconds into your video ad for best results. If you really want your viewers to feel compelled to act, try holding off on asking them to take action until around 5 seconds before the end of your video ads.

YouTube:

On YouTube, most creators find success with 22 minutes as an ideal length for an intro episode and 7 minutes for subsequent episodes (these times are averages). However, these aren’t hard and fast rules. You might find something works better for you if it falls outside of those ranges. Just make sure you’re giving your potential customers enough value to justify whatever length of video you produce. As with any marketing strategy, what will work best for you will depend on your unique brand, product/service, target market, etc. The key is to continually test and analyze your data until you figure out what works best for your specific situation. By doing A/B testing with different lengths of videos, you can begin refining your approach over time.

Another tip to keep in mind is that long-form video doesn’t mean as long as possible. In fact, advertisers commonly regret making their videos too long. Even though you think nobody would ever stop watching once your video hits 4 hours, please, do not still do that, it turns out they will. Keep your videos under 8 minutes in order to increase able of watching and appeal to today’s busy consumers. It’s also worth noting that YouTube videos count views from mobile devices differently than the views from desktop computers. They start counting a view at 3 seconds on mobile and 30 seconds on the desktop. While you may lose video views from your analytics software, you shouldn’t experience any substantial drop in actual watching thanks to Google’s proprietary view recognition technology.