How LONG Should Your Videos Be on YouTube (Data-Based) To Get The Most Watch Hours?

I've published 353 videos on YouTube, with 219 of them in 2025 alone. I'm going to share insights into the ideal YouTube video length for maximizing watch hours, which can help you achieve YouTube monetization faster. We'll also explore the differences in ideal watch hours for various video types: fireside chats (talking to the camera), podcast episodes, and clips from either.

There's an ideal length for each video type, and we'll break down the data to find the sweet spot for generating the most watch hours. I even discovered a significant takeaway that I'll be implementing immediately on my YouTube journey. Let's look at the data from my Airtable dashboard, covering all my wide-format videos (excluding Shorts) from 2017 to 2025.

Overall Video Performance

I categorize videos by length: "short" (0-15 minutes), "medium" (15-40 minutes), and "long" (40+ minutes).

Long-form videos account for approximately 70% of my total watch hours, followed by medium, then short. However, when looking at average watch hours per video, medium-length videos perform the best. This is largely because I have so many podcast episodes, which were almost exclusively long-form from 2017 to 2024. Medium and short videos became more prevalent in 2024 and significantly more so in 2025.

Currently, medium-length videos contribute 50% of my watch hours, long-form 46%, and short videos about 4%. This is a crucial insight as I plan my future content.

Detailed Video Duration Analysis

I've further categorized video durations into sub-groups: 0-1 minute, 1-5 minutes, 5-10 minutes, then 5-minute increments from 10 to 60 minutes, and finally 60-90 minutes and 90+ minutes.

My data shows that 30-35 minutes is the most dominant length for watch hours, followed closely by 35-40 minutes and then 45-50 minutes. While 30-35 minutes shows the highest watch hours per video, it's based on a small sample size of only one video. Videos between 35-40 minutes have 21 watch hours per video with seven records, making that a stronger indicator.

Interestingly, despite having many videos in the 0-1, 1-5, and 5-10 minute ranges, these shorter videos generally perform poorly. The 5-10 minute category performs the best of the three shortest groups. My podcast episodes typically fall into the 40-90 minute range.

My takeaway here is that while the medium length is generally ideal, the sweet spot for YouTube videos is between 30 and 40 minutes. Longer videos, especially from 45 minutes onward, also perform well. Short videos are not effective for gaining watch hours.

Fireside Chat / Talking Head Videos

For fireside chats (talking to the camera), I don't have any long-form videos; they all fall into the short or medium categories. Medium-length fireside chats generate 85% of total watch hours and 92% per video when averaged. This suggests that fireside chats should ideally be between 15 and 40 minutes.

Looking at subcategories, 35-40 minutes and 30-35 minutes are the top performers, followed by 15-20 minutes. Specifically, 35-40 minutes yields 66.42 watch hours per video, 30-35 minutes gets 35 watch hours, and 15-20 minutes gets 9.54 watch hours per video.

Therefore, if I'm creating fireside chats, I should aim for them to be at least 25 minutes long, with 25-40 minutes appearing to be the optimal range.

Podcast Episodes

For podcast episodes, which are primarily long or medium length, long episodes account for about 85% of total watch hours. However, when averaged per video, medium-length episodes (15-40 minutes) get more watch hours than long ones.

Delving into the data for podcast episodes, 20-25 minutes is the most dominant segment for average watch hours per video. Following that, 90+ minutes (2.1 watch hours per episode) and 15-20 minutes (1.8 watch hours per episode) perform similarly. There's also a close performance between 60-90 minutes and 15-20 minutes, with 40-50 minutes falling in the middle.

It appears that for podcast episodes, it's either short (15-25 minutes) or very long (90+ minutes) that performs best, with the middle ground being less effective. I'll need to experiment more with the middle durations as I produce more podcast episodes.

Video Clips

This category provided my biggest revelation. All my video clips are short (less than 15 minutes).

Clips between 5-10 minutes make up 70% of watch hours, with 0-5 minute videos contributing 23%, and 10-15 minute videos only 5%.

I have 198 clips that are 0-5 minutes long, 48 clips that are 5-10 minutes long, and only one clip over 10 minutes. The per-video watch hour data is striking:

• Clips less than 5 minutes: 2.29 watch hours per clip.
• Clips 5-10 minutes: 6.76 watch hours per clip.

This is excellent news! I enjoy making clips because they impact channel growth. By making longer clips (5-10 minutes), I spend less time producing them, and they generate significantly more watch hours. This is a win-win. My immediate strategy is to aim for clips that are at least 5 minutes long and stop creating anything shorter. This applies to wide-format horizontal videos, not Shorts, specifically pieces cut from podcast episodes or fireside chats.

Key Takeaways

To summarize, my data suggests:

• Medium-format videos (15-40 minutes) perform best overall for watch hours on YouTube, regardless of format.
• For fireside chats, the ideal length is 30-40 minutes, with 15-20 minutes and 5-10 minutes as secondary options.
• For podcast episodes, shorter lengths (15-25 minutes) and very long lengths (55 minutes and up) seem to perform better than the middle durations.
• For video clips, aim for 5-10 minutes or longer. This significantly boosts watch hours per clip.

I'll be adjusting my YouTube strategy in the coming months based on these insights. What are your thoughts on this data, and how might it apply to your channel?