Online Viewers Start Leaving if Video Doesn’t Play in 2 Seconds, Says Study

Better connection speeds and more content means media companies are turning to video as an important revenue source. But to succeed, they must reach viewers fast. Here are some facts and graphics from a new study that shows how long viewers will wait.

As revenues decline for traditional forms of online advertising, video is emerging as a bright spot for many media companies. It offers an opportunity for long engagement and hefty ad rates — but also a challenge to make it work.

A new study reports that faster internet connections have made viewers more impatient, and that people begin abandoning videos if they don’t load within two seconds. Every second of additional delay results in approximately 6 percent more viewers jumping ship. This chart shows how about 20 percent of viewers are gone after five seconds but that viewers are slightly more patient for long-length videos:

The research comes by way of Ramesh Sitaraman, a computer science professor at UMass Amherst, who studied data representing 23 million video views from 6.7 million unique visitors. The study offers new metrics for streaming views to complement existing studies that describe the “four second rule” — the amount of time people will wait for a webpage to download. It also shows that people will abandon a video faster based on their type of connection (note how people are more patient with mobile) :

The study, which you can read for yourself here (PDF), contains no startling surprises — most of us probably suspected that people give up on watching videos that don’t load. But it does provide useful empirical evidence for companies who must decide how to invest architecture to support their video platforms.

Akamai, a content delivery network that helps sites speed up delivery, provided data and research space for the study but did not influence its findings, according to a spokesperson.

Via: GigaOm

Prateek Panda

Prateek is the Founder of TheTechPanda. He's passionate about technology startups and entrepreneurship and enjoys speaking to new founders every day. Prateek has also been consistently regarded as one of the top marketing experts in the region.

Recent Posts

Outbound & inbound: India attracts businesses from UK, China & US while expanding to Middle East

The Tech Panda takes a look at how India has been attracting foreign businesses from…

20 hours ago

UPI value & volume surpass records in March

India’s digital payments ecosystem achieved a record high in March, with UPI transactions reaching INR24.77…

21 hours ago

AI-powered digital twins, Cobots, agentic AI, physical AI & edge computing are enabling an anticipatory AI-first manufacturing ecosystem

Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) (BSE: 532540, NSE: TCS), ), a leader in IT services, consulting, and business…

21 hours ago

Misinformation & deepfakes help weaponize AI: Should AI be as open as the internet then?

The ability for AI to spread misinformation has been reaching hair-raising lengths, another and possibly…

3 days ago

What employees want: Not everyone feels ready to flow with AI at the workplace

Artificial Intelligence is everywhere now. It’s safe to say that organizations have either fully adopted…

6 days ago

Are business markets safe from Grok AI?

With the rise of advanced AI models such as Grok AI developed by Elon Musk's…

7 days ago