I was looking for hard-and-fast data on YouTube viewing stats.

I couldn’t find much that was recent. Using my own stats seems like the mother of all sampling biases… so looking at two year old data we can draw that you lose 1/3rd of your audience after 30 seconds. More recent data suggests that bloggers 20-35 are embedding the most videos (mostly music, entertainment, and people/blogs categories). How-to videos are some of the LEAST embedded.

With an average video length of more than 4 minutes, seems like we have an attention span problem. Short of pumping aderol into the water supply, we can only hope to make better videos:

• Limit your core message to <30 seconds
• Music, entertainment, and popular people will get your videos embedded (expanding the viewing audience per site)
• Aim for attracting 20-35 year olds wherever possible

In my experience, and based completely on non-empirical data, so take it for what it’s worth:

• If I’m not hooked within 10 seconds, I’m out
• If the intro is too long, the premise weak, or the music/colors annoying or hard to read, I’m out
• If it’s not funny or cool within 30 seconds, I’m out (unless I specifically sought the video out)
• The best videos are niche videos aimed specifically at me or my community or my interests