• by Mallory Russell , July 3, 2014

For years, creative agencies were restricted by the confines of television advertising. The lucky – and few – may have had the chance to tell a brand’s story in a minute commercial, but most had to condense their stories into 15- or 30-second spots.

Then online video came along and shook up the whole game.

Online video affords brands the opportunity to produce long-form content. No longer restricted by television commercial breaks, brands have used the medium to explore the idea of content in non-traditional units of time. There are ads clocking in a two minutes, short films, half an hour features, and web series.

The two most viewed campaigns this year – Wren’s “First Kiss” (118 million views) and Nike’s “Risk Everything”(112 million views) – are both more than three-and-a-half minutes in length. The average length of a branded video in our database now clocks in at more than two minutes, which shows how brands have really adapted to the freedom inherent in the online space.

And yet, the lengthening of branded video time is in direct juxtaposition to public attention spans, which seem to be getting shorter overall.

Young audiences – and teenagers, in particular – are spending more time on their mobile phones engaging with apps like Vine and Snapchat, which specialize in extremely short-form content. Facebook just announced Sligshot, its answer to Snapchat. And one of the most popular apps of the last month, Yo, simply lets users text the word “yo” to each other – the attention span doesn’t have to be too long for that one.

Forced to compete with these new-short form messaging and social platforms, brands are finding incredibly creative ways to tell their stories in a six-second Vine video and fleeting Snapchat pics.

Industry experts have lauded brands like Lowe’s for its Vine campaign that provided customers with quick home improvement tips; the brand launched a dozen of 6-second videos teaching viewers how to do things like remove a stripped screw. Taco Bell was quick to jump on Snapchat, using it to reintroduce its Beefy Crunch Burrito. Would it be so surprising if Burger King started “yo-ing” you next?

With long-form content growing in popularity, and short-form content platforms all the rage, marketers must be wondering where they should invest their time and money. Is long-form or short-form content the better bet?

The answer is simple: both are great investments -- and then not so simple: depending on the brand.

Brands shouldn’t be asking whether money is better spent in long or short-form content, they should be asking what content their target audience is already engaging with and what platforms they are willing to engage with.

For some brands, a three-minute video may work best, for others it might be Snapchat. But maybe, just maybe, it’s a combination of both. Google tells great stories in video that are several minutes in length, but its most popular campaign last year, “Chrome: For… “(99 million views), is made up of 16-second videos.

The important thing to remember is that a brand shouldn’t be on Vine or Snapchat or any other platform simply because it is trendy. A brand’s use of a medium needs to be authentic to that brand’s story and to its consumers. Each brand must find their story first, and then find the medium and platform that allow them to tell it best.