As a board member of a company in the online video advertising market (FreeWheel), I regularly get to chat with many video content producers, owners and distributors. Without fail, the fervent “holy war” between short form and long form video zealots arises as a top of conversation. Without getting into the nuances of the debate, the short formists argue that the web audience wants its video in bite-sized chunks, unlike a traditional television viewing experience. They inevitably point to the popularity of YouTube as evidence for their perspective. The long formists maintain that short form video only dominates online video viewing because long form content has been slow to come online. Of late, long formists have cited recent data from Nielsen that shows the growth in the online video streaming of Hulu. Neither side seems willing to open their minds to the possibility that there might be a little grey in their black and white worlds.

I’ve found religion and my faith lies with the availability of high quality online video of any length. The only thing that matters online, like across all media channels, is the value that someone gets from the content. There are vast audiences for both books and magazines, arguably the long form and short form, respectively, of the print world. On television, I can get my comedy fix from 23 minutes of Seinfeld or from short sketches on Saturday Night Live. Why can’t the same coexistence of content be true for online video? After all, I’m just as happy to watch two minutes of low production value Riegel & Blatt as I am 43 minutes of Lost in high definition because each video provides me with (very different!) entertainment value. Content producers should not be occupying themselves with discussions about the appropriate duration of online video. Instead, the path to salvation is will be found by focusing on creating quality content and on working to get that content distributed, discovered and monetized.