How long should a product video be?

Completion falls steadily as videos get longer. Vidyard's analysis of more than 940,000 business videos created in 2024 found that when a video is under one minute long, 65% of viewers stay engaged all the way to the end, while for videos over 20 minutes only 20% do ¹. Its earlier dataset of more than 1.78 million videos from 2022, as reported by MarketingProfs, fills in the steps between: 66% of viewers finish videos under a minute, 56% finish one to two minutes, 50% finish two to ten minutes, 39% finish ten to twenty minutes and 22% finish anything longer ².

Wistia, which analyzed over 13 million videos for its 2026 State of Video report, sees the same shape from a different angle. Videos under a minute average a 52% engagement rate, meaning viewers typically watch about half of the running time, and product videos of that length sit at 50% ³. Wistia measures how much of a video is watched rather than whether people reach the end, so its figures are not directly comparable with Vidyard's, but both point toward short. Wistia also finds that videos of five to thirty minutes average a 9% click-through rate ³, which is a reminder that long video works when the viewer has already decided to learn, as with webinars and walkthroughs, rather than when you are trying to win their attention.

Marketers' instincts land in the same place. In Wyzowl's 2026 survey, 71% of respondents said videos between 30 seconds and two minutes are the most effective ⁴.

The platforms have raised their ceilings, but a ceiling is not a target. YouTube categorizes vertical or square uploads of up to three minutes as Shorts for videos uploaded since 15 October 2024 ⁵, Instagram raised Reels uploads from 90 seconds to three minutes in January 2025 ⁶, LinkedIn accepts videos of up to 15 minutes ⁷ and X caps accounts without Premium at 140 seconds ⁸. Instagram says one of the most important things it predicts when ranking Reels is how likely you are to watch a reel all the way through ⁹, so a shorter video that people actually finish can help its own distribution.

In practice that suggests a 15 to 30 second cut for feeds, up to a minute on a landing page, and saving the long walkthrough for people who have already asked for it.