Watching videos online is now a regular part of peoples’ regular media consumption according to a new report from Yahoo. Roughly half the UK population, 25M people, now view videos on the internet every month.

The study focused upon the immense surge in popularity for short video clips, so called “short-form content”, that are under 5 minutes in length and counts sport, news music and comedy among its most viewed genres.

Advertisers have been quick to seize upon the huge opportunity offered by such a massive audience. Yahoo studied the techniques employed by the most successful of these, revealing that high quality pre-roll adverts of less than 22 seconds commanded the most attention from consumers and that further mileage could be gained from introducing an interactive element to the messaging.