Did you notice the drop-off point on the long one? I ran a similar test last year with a guitar lesson channel, not software, and the numbers looked backwards at first. The 45 second clip of a riff got like 200k views and maybe 15 people clicked through to the full course page. The 8 minute breakdown of one solo got 9k views but 40 of those people bought the course. My guess is the short stuff pulls in random scrollers who never had any intent to buy, while the long stuff self selects for people already shopping. The view gap makes the short look like the winner when it's really just reaching a colder crowd. Retargeting the short viewers later makes total sense because by then they actually know who you are. One client is thin data but what you're describing matches how attention works online pretty well.

Pretty sure that's just how they build airports now, exposed trays make it way cheaper to run new cables later without tearing up the ceiling. Half the new terminals look like that. Not everything is some big design statement, sometimes it's just the budget talking.