Simon van Wyk

1. The Short (and Honest) Answer

Here’s the quick answer…

How long should an explainer video be?

As short as possible.

We recommend anything between 30 seconds and 2 minutes, and while we’ve certainly made videos that are longer than that, we don’t really recommend going over the 2 minute mark unless completely necessary.

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But let’s move onto the longer answer…

2. What Determines Length? Budget, Time & Reality

When deciding how long an explainer video should be, the two main factors to consider are budget/time and viewer engagement.

Budget is the most self explanatory factor. Shorter videos are cheaper to make than longer videos. There might be some exceptions to the rule. For example, if your explainer is only a talking-head, then the cost of a 30 second video is not going to be wildly different to the cost of a 2 minute video. But… if you’re making a 2D animated explainer like the ones Studio Bo are known for, then there’s going to be a huge cost difference between a 30 second and 2 minute video. Animation takes time, and as the saying goes, time is money.

For many client’s, their budget actually ends up dictating the length of the video they go for. They might only have enough budget for a 45 second video, and therefore a longer 2 minute explainer is off the cards.

But that’s not fundamentally a bad thing. If you can condense your message to 45 seconds, you probably should. Also, videos hardly ever stand-alone, so quite often the information you couldn’t get into the video itself can still live somewhere else - either in an accompanying post or webpage, or via additional slides in a pitch meeting.

Time goes hand in hand with budget, because if you’re working against the clock on an un-movable deadline, then you might not have enough time to produce a longer explainer video. (Side note… if you have enough budget to hire extra hands you can sometimes rise above this challenge, but this still requires a client having enough time to speedily review each stage of a project.)

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3. Engagement Over Everything

Viewer engagement is another big factor. The length of your video should be determined by how long you think you can adequately retain people’s attention. Now, what might surprise you is that this isn’t a one-size-fits-all answer.

If you’re going to sponsor your explainer as an ad on YouTube, you might want to condense everything into those unskippable 15 seconds, because let’s be honest, if a viewer is being forced your video and didn’t chose to watch it, they will most likely skip it the moment those 15 seconds are over.

However, if your explainer is on a ‘how to’ section of your website, then a viewer has most likely chosen to interact with your video, and therefore will stick with it for as long as it feels like it’s answering their question.

There is research to suggest that attention spans are decreasing, but it’s also true that if the content is good and people genuinely want to watch it, the length won’t play a huge factor. Long format content regularly gets millions of views on YouTube… the secret? It’s engaging.

So, to circle back to the question…

How long should an explainer video be?

It should be as long as you can afford and as long as you’re able to hold people’s attention for.

And usually, in our experience, this means… as short as possible.

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Contact Studio Bo to get help deciding how long you need your explainer to be.