Doing online video? Keep it under three minutes.

A recent report by the New York Times says the average online video duration is 2.7 minutes. The report also said that 75% of Internet users watch an average of three hours of online video a month and that YouTube had 2.4 billion video views in the month of July. Yes, billion. That's a lot of video viewing. So what are the takeaways from this?

1. It's a great time to do online video for your organization. People are already there looking for the good stuff. It's not new anymore so you should have an easier time convincing someone that it's a good idea.
   
2. Keep the videos brief because an unspoken expectation has now been established, namely that online video viewing is not a major time commitment. People are more likely to give you three minutes rather than five minutes.
3. The online video world will become increasingly competitive. It's not enough to just do online video. It needs to be remarkable in some way to stand out from the other billion videos.