Can 2 seconds video views actually drive sales?

P & G — acknowledged as the world’s largest advertiser — says their data reveals the following about digital video ads:

• The average ad is viewed for 1.7 seconds. Remember, that’s the AVERAGE
• Only 20% of all ads are viewed for 2 seconds

That means that 80% of all ads are viewed for less than 2 seconds, or not at all.

So, you may ask, what can you do in 2 seconds or less? Well, of course, there’s a study about that. Note the source: Facebook and Oracle Data… but their study says that 2 seconds can work. According to their research, views under 2 seconds drove 52% of sales lift attributed to the campaigns.

They’ve made this claim based on tracking 14 ad campaigns. Now call me skeptical, but Eric Roza from Oracle, told AdAge, “They do drive sales outcomes. Albeit less so than longer length videos.”

They did conclude, as you would expect, the longer you watched, the more valuable it became. Long views were 1.6x more valuable than short views. Long views tend to have higher lift estimates at any given impression number, according to the study.