And for those fair readers who thought I was buried somewhere between New Castle and Poulsbo, rumors of my demise have been greatly exaggerated, more on that at the bottom of the post.

This statistic comes from a comScore report, but was brought to my attention by The Agitator.

Additionally that comScore report found that the average time people are watching videos is 3-5 minutes, not the 1  1/2-  to 2-minute range we advise the ministries we work with.

But before you fire up the camera for that long-form video, remember averages are often skewed by large numbers at either end of the spectrum. In other words a few folks watching full-length movies, say on Hulu.com, could skew that number up fairly easily.

Bottom line, video engages people exponentially longer than a web page alone. We used to say you had eight seconds to capture a user with a web page, now I usually say its down to two or three seconds. Which means that people, on average, will engage with a video for 80 times longer then they do with a web page alone.

So if three-quarters of the folks on the internet watch video and they engage with it nearly two orders of magnitude longer than just a web page – say it with me now – you need to be doing online video.

Personal Note: I know I haven’t been writing as often, but things are busy both here at Masterworks and at home. Family and work come first, so posting to the blog comes fourth. Second is a two-way tie between bicycling and sitting in airports. Good news, we’ve been working on some exciting stuff that we’ll announce in these pages soon!