Focus on Audience Retention or 10 min videos?

[Yachts For Sale]

Watch time is king. More minutes watched the better.
So 30% of a 10 min video is better than 50% of a 5 minute video.

This is the point. YouTube want viewers to stay on the platform as long as possible so they measure how many minutes people watch your videos for and place this as being more important than how many views you get.
You should make your videos as long as you can without losing peoples interest, so if you think you can keep people entertained for 10 minutes, go for it. If you think that at the 5 minute mark you have said all you need to and are starting to ramble...cut it to 5 minutes.

 

[Zijin_cheng]

that 10 minute mark is really important, but only if you are working with adsense

If you know you can bang out a stellar 5 minute video and you aren't working with adsense - then do that first. imho

Thanks for that info

 

[Scotty Byrd]

i normally do ten minute videos than last min im like buy off my affiliate links lol

 

[FireShock]

If you make good content, you get two birds with one stone. Both are important in your channel, but I would focus on making the YT video content possible, but before you post think would someone watch this video all the way through and what would make them all the way through? But not all ideas can be stretch to 10 mins + keep that in mind

 

[Ocean Chan]

I think its all based on initial views whether youtube will promote it or not.
I have seen sub 1 minute meme videos that have been heavily promoted on the front page and trending.
Those meme videos are of the lowest quality, but thousands of people watch them and pass them around

At the end of the day it depends on what the content is, regardless of length