What is the Optimal Length for Educational Webinar content on the Internet?

Cast your vote for what you feel is the best length for educational webinar content.

Remember the movie There’s Something About Mary from the late 90s? A lot of it hasn’t aged well. Certain words are used that would get most people cancelled these days, but it still stands as a pioneer in the field of raunchy comedy. 

One still-funny scene involves Ben Stiller picking up a very sketchy-looking hitchhiker who tells him that he’s got a great business idea: “You know the ‘8-Minute Abs’ video? Well, this is going to blow that right out of the water: ‘7-Minute Abs’!” 

Brilliant.

Ridiculous as this is, it actually does beg the question: what is the optimal length for educational video content on the internet, especially now that attention spans continue to shrink? Given the prevalence of TikTok and Instagram Reels, it’s fair to say that people now decide whether to watch video content in a matter of seconds, maybe even less than a second. 

In 2019, research showed that 60-minute webinars were preferred to the 30-minute variety. This was one of the most surprising insights we discovered, as webinars scheduled for 60 minutes attracted 67% of registrations, while 30-minute webinars only attracted 8%. From this you can intuit that longer webinars are viewed as more valuable. Perhaps these are the ones that more often offered continuing education credits, or perhaps people just wanted to be able to take longer breaks from their work? 

But then the pandemic hit, and it seems like all that time at home on our phones catalyzed the trend of lowered attention spans. Or maybe this is a holdover from all the ‘screen fatigue’ we experienced during the pandemic with endless Zoom calls and virtual conferences. 

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So how long should a webinar be? TedTalks says 18 minutes. (The Science Behind TED's 18-Minute Rule). But others say 9 minutes. How funny would it be if the optimal length wound up being 7 minutes! You could do your 7-minute abs workout while infusing your mind with 7 minutes of webinar content 😉.

On a more serious note, just think, if you cut your webinar time down, you can devote a newly freed up 15 minutes to contact RPost to learn how to save 50% or more on your eSignature costs.

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We’d love to know what you think. Cast your vote below for what you feel is the best length for educational webinar content:

And speaking of webinars, you can always re-live all our great webinars from 2023. Whether you’re in the real estate, legal, finance, or insurance industry, you’re sure to find some key insights that will prepare you well for the coming year. And, as always, feel free to contact us to learn more about RMail, RSign, RDocs, or RForms. 

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