There’s been an fascinating shift in video consumption of late, which might affect your video technique: Longer brief movies at the moment are seemingly gaining extra traction with audiences.
So by “longer brief” movies, we’re not speaking a couple of shift again to long-form content material of 5 minutes or extra. However what’s seemingly occurring, primarily based on the bulletins from every app, is that customers at the moment are extra keen to interact with 3-minute-long movies, versus 30-second uploads.
In January, Instagram prolonged Reels to three minutes, after beforehand reporting that movies longer than 90 seconds didn’t carry out as properly, whereas YouTube has additionally made 3-minute-long clips eligible for the Shorts feed.
60-90 seconds was once the candy spot, however now, the platforms are shifting to barely longer clips, with a view to encouraging extra engagement.
And the identical is now evident on TikTok as properly, as demonstrated in Buffer’s newest analysis report, which seems at TikTok viewing tendencies, primarily based on evaluation of 1.1 million TikTok clips.
As per Buffer:
“TikTok movies which might be longer than one minute get 63.8% extra watch time than movies within the 30-60 second vary.”
As you’ll be able to see on this chart, longer movies get extra attain, by a giant margin, although Buffer’s information doesn’t specify a video size past one minute.
The identical goes for watch time, with longer movies driving extra engagement.

That then sends a constructive sign to TikTok’s algorithm that that is related and fascinating content material, which doubtless influences the primary chart above as properly.
So, basically, TikTok’s seeing the identical shift as different platforms, in longer brief movies getting extra consideration. Once more, this doesn’t imply that you need to be trying to submit long-form epics to the app (TikTok’s add restrict is 10 minutes), however it could offer you some further meals for thought with reference to what’s driving engagement, and how one can maximize your video efforts.
You possibly can learn Buffer’s full research report right here.