Short-form mobile video creative of around six to eight seconds sees engagement rates up to 60 per cent higher than longer brand videos, a new study involving Stella Artois, Lynz and TomTom has found.

The research, carried out by Opera Mediaworks, found that shorter mobile videos were optimal for branding campaigns, delivering on average 36 per cent higher engagement levels than long form, and in turn delivering the best return when it came to driving traffic. With the Stella Artois campaign, the difference was 60 per cent for a six-second version of the video, compared to a 15-second version.

However, with product-focused campaigns featuring a call to action, longer form video was the more successful method, with 15 to 30-second videos offering engagement rates around 30 per cent higher when asking viewers to “Find Out More”. The Lynx campaign, which aimed at driving users to click a “Locate Store” button, saw a 38 per cent jump in clicks in the long-form video.

“It has long been suspected that the length of mobile video creative has a direct impact on audience engagement rates, and its reassuring to have a specific measure of this now,” said Mark Slade, managing director for EMEA at Opera Mediaworks. “Mobile video continues to be a huge growth area for advertising, considering the ubiquity of smartphones and the changing habits of how we consumer content.

“Following these findings, we look forward to working with brands and agencies in helping them further explore the nuances to deliver increasingly effective, mobile-first campaigns that are relevant and non-intrusive to consumers.”

When it comes to dwell time and click-through rates, the optimal video length for maximising audience engagement in non-native environments on mobile is between 14 and 15 seconds, with videos in the window concise enough to deliver engagement averages double those of longer form videos, while also delivering click-through rates twice as high as short-form videos.