How Long Should Your Teaser (Explainer) Video Be?

Need to make a short video (teaser) pitch to capture the imagination of the users, you need to make it of the right length.

Filmmakers, artists, bands, corporates, all are making teaser videos nowadays to promote their new material or product. They post a teaser video of their film or of their album before it’s released. Although they all know the importance of teaser videos (companies call it explainer videos), there are different school of thoughts when it comes to the length of these videos/previews.

A teaser campaign (or pre-launch campaign) consists of one or more small advertisements that’s released before a larger, full-blown campaign for a product launch or an important event.

Teaser videos should be long enough to get the point across, but not so long that it causes viewer fatigue. Most product companies would say that the perfect length for the video would depend on the scope.

As usual there are a couple of thoughts:

1. One is that the video should be short, as many feel that the YouTube attention span is around 8 seconds (usually, most film and music videos fall in this category).
2. However, there is another school of thought that says that the teaser should be long enough to get the point across, even if it means stretching the video up to few minutes long (most product teasers fall in this category).

So which one is right? Well, it seems neither may be right!

Here are the findings from the study conducted by Think With Google:

1. 30 second ads posted online, usually performed far better than either 15 or 60 second ones. Most viewers watched it all the way through getting important details about the product without any viewer fatigue.
2. But its different on television, where 15 second ads are up to 75% more effective (and cheaper) than their longer counterparts

But then online advertising is known to display random access nature.

Although many believe that there is no best length for teaser videos, as it all depends on the purpose, scope and target audience.

However, going by the findings, it seems the bottom line is that 30 seconds is the perfect option – not too long nor too short for the viewer.