Two seconds . That 's when Internet users start ditching online videos if they 're not loading properly , according to a new study from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and Akamai Technologies . By the 10-second mark , if the video still has n't loaded , about 40 % of Web users will have abandoned it , according to data presented in the study . On average , for every second that the video does n't start playing after the two-second mark , there 's a 5.8 % increase in the rate at which the video viewers bail . The findings vary depending on the video . `` Viewers are less tolerant to startup delay for a short video such as a news clip than a long video such an hour-long TV episode , '' the authors say . But , in general , the findings seem to confirm a truism in the twitchy world of the Internet : Online users do n't like to wait . `` The study ... contains no startling surprises -- most of us probably suspected that people give up on watching videos that do n't load , '' Jeff John Roberts writes on the site GigaOm . `` But it does provide useful empirical evidence for companies who must decide how to invest architecture to support their video platforms . '' Some technology bloggers were surprised people did n't click away from glitchy videos faster . And previous reports , including one from the New York Times , suggest Web users are even more impatient when it comes to text-based Web pages . The Times in February cited Harry Shum , from Microsoft , as saying that people will go to a website less frequently if it loads 250 milliseconds slower than a competitor 's . As this graphic highlights , that 's faster than the blink of an eye . `` Every millisecond matters , '' a Google engineer told the paper . The UMass-Amherst paper was based on data collected from 6.7 million unique video viewers over a 10-day period , according to the report . The test subjects played a total of 23 million video views . The study finds video quality has a potentially longtime impact on a website 's popularity . A `` viewer who experienced failure '' is about 2 % less likely to come back to that same site that week , compared to a person whose videos loaded smoothly . Finally , the video-loading game seems to be one of expectations . People who are trying to watch videos on a mobile phone are likely to be a bit more patient than those on desktop computers with high-speed connections . It 's easy to see how that would be the case . Think back to the hee-hawing days of dial-up Internet and remember how long you used to wait for a single photo to load on a super-slow Internet connection . In part because of this , Dante D'Orazio writes for The Verge that efforts to make online video load faster and faster may amount to an `` unwinnable battle . '' `` There may very well be a point when we 'll no longer notice , '' he writes , `` but for now , it seems that you can never have enough speed . '' Hate online wait times ? Have thoughts on the report ? Take two seconds and let us know what you think of all this in the comments section .
Study : Users begin to leave online video after two seconds if it does n't load . After that , an average of 5.8 % of them leave the video per second . Study is from University of Massachusetts at Amherst and Akamai Technologies . Researchers looked at the habits of 6.7 million unique video viewers .