Video Fact Sheet

If there’s one content format that has grown to dominate online media, it’s surely video. YouTube has become a search engine second to Google, where people can find information, news, and entertainment through a quick search or browse. With the rise of TikTok, Instagram Reels, and Facebook Stories, as well as streaming services such as Twitch, it has never been easier to share and consume video content. And employee experience is following suit, with companies increasingly turning to video for internal communications, training, and much more beyond pure marketing.

Video Consumption Trends

The average person is predicted to spend 100 minutes per day watching online videos.  Advertising expenditure on online video is rising at an average rate of 18% a year. – Zenith Media 

On YouTube alone, 500 hours of video are uploaded every minute. – Statista 

80% of U.S. parents of children 11 and under say their kids watch YouTube. – Pew Research 

3.25 billion hours of video are watched on YouTube each month. — Fortunelords  

The majority of online video is now watched on a smartphone, and mobile is forecast to account for 72% of the growth in spending on online video advertising. — Forrester 

Mobile-first video ads generate more than half of Facebook’s total video revenue. – The Social Shepherd

500 million people watch video on Facebook every day. – Facebook

TikTok now has 1 billion monthly active users, who spend more than 850 minutes per month on the app. 167 million TikTok videos are watched every minute. – Influencer Marketing Hub

Almost 43,000 hours of webinar content are watched every day. The average viewing time for webinars, including a 10 to 15-minute Q&A session, was 56 minutes. – On24 

“Now, roughly half of the dozen pieces of content we produce and publish each week include video. This has made our stories stickier and more discoverable, significantly boosting both our site traffic and engagement on social, and helping our content spread to more readers on more platforms.” – Jay Moye, Coca-Cola

Maximizing Video SEO

Studies show that 85% of marketers use video as a tool to boost SEO.-  Creatorkit 

78% of businesses say they received more traffic after implementing videos in their content strategies. – SERPwatch

“Search engines can’t watch videos, but adding transcripts allows search engines to crawl the full text of your audio or video content so that it can be properly indexed… Not only can search engines crawl your content and drive traffic to your site, but viewers on your site can find the videos they’re looking for. An interactive transcript allows users to search for keywords within the transcript, and see everywhere that keyword appears.” – 3playmedia

“Video SEO is a holistic process of optimizing traffic for your video content from Google, Bing and other search engines. YouTube SEO (also called YouTube optimization) is the process of maximizing your presence on search and related videos within the YouTube platform. While YouTube is a search engine in one sense, it’s also a social network, and the process of optimizing distribution on YouTube is not identical to the process of optimizing rankings on Google.” –  Yoast 

Pages with videos are 53 times more likely to rank on Google’s first page.  Google is now showing video thumbnails in 26% of search results. – BrightEdge

“Always prioritize user experience on top of your video optimizations as Google’s ranking signals are primarily user-centric. Creating well-structured video content doesn’t just fall on production, there are also technical SEO steps that you need to satisfy such as your keyword research, a mobile-friendly UI, and even the content specifications of your video in terms of audio and video layout.” – Propelrr 

Here are some general guidelines to optimize videos from Search Engine Journal:

• Be sure each video has a unique description – this makes it easier to find through search and helps it stand out from similar videos.
• Use the first few lines of text to explain what the video is about using search-friendly keywords and natural language.
• Use the rest of the text (what shows up once they click Show more) for 300 to 2,100 characters of extra information like what your channel’s about, social links, etc.
• Ensure that you only use hashtags related to your video. For example, if you upload a review of a specific movie do not add hashtags related to different or unrelated popular movies, actors, or unrelated topics to falsely increase views. 

Video and Accessibility

69% of people view video with sound off in public places and 25% watch with sound off in private places. In the words of Helen Lin, Chief Digital Officer, Publicis Media:

“When done right, captioning not only does NOT detract from brand messaging, but leads to greater ad recall, memory quality and brand linkage.” – Forbes 

Adding captions has increased view times on both YouTube and Facebook videos. 80% of people are more likely to watch an entire video when captions are available. 36% of organizations caption all of their video content, and 87% of educational institutions add closed captions to at least some video. The #1 driver for captioning is legal compliance, while the #1 barrier to captioning was cost/budget. – 3playmedia 

The Power of Video

Video allows for a virtual level of connection that’s hard to top. 61 percent of buyers say they can get as much value from meeting suppliers over video conference as they can from in-person visits. – McKinsey

“VR is a ticket for higher video counts and longer watch times because of its ability to transport the user to a whole other world, one populated by anything the imagination can conjure. As soon as a headset is placed in position, anticipation begins and continues to build up until the first pixel is illuminated.” – ARPost

VR-based training results in higher confidence levels and an improved ability to actually apply the learning on the job. In fact, learners trained with VR were up to 275% more confident to act on what they learned after training — a 40% improvement over classroom and 35% improvement over e-learning training. V-learners felt 3.75 times more emotionally connected to the content than classroom learners and 2.3 times more connected than e-learners. – PwC 

Learning Via Video

One-third of internet users watched a tutorial or how-to video this week. – Hootsuite 

86% of US viewers say they often use YouTube to learn new things. There are more learning-related videos on YouTube than books in the Library of Congress. – Think With Google 

48% of all employees consider video the most engaging form of communication. – TechSmith

People retain 95% of what they watch from a video. – Forbes

LinkedIn Learning hosts over 16,000 online courses, while Udemy hosts over 180,000, and the pandemic has accelerated growth in this space. Coursera enrollment numbers more than doubled in 2020 and increased by 32% the following year. –  World Economic Forum 

Meanwhile, Thinkific saw a 200% increase in courses created on its platform. –  Techcouver 

Livestreaming

57% of marketers now use live video within their strategies. – Smart Insights

Live video usage will increase 15-fold over the next five years. – Cisco 

LinkedIn broadcasters are seeing 7x more reactions and 24x more comments on average for live streams compared to regular video. – LinkedIn

Marketing Through Video

Video ads are the #1 way consumers discovered a brand they later purchased from. –  Animoto 

The most common types of videos made by marketers are presentations (65%), followed by ads (57%), and explainers (47%). 32% of businesses use video for sales; 24% use video in their leadership messages, and 19% use video in their customer support messages. – Biteable 

78% of enterprise organizations realize an ROI of 100% or more from their investment in testimonial videos. – Vocal Video

96% of people report watching explainer videos to learn more about a product, with 88% being swayed to make a purchase.  The product doesn’t have to be physical, either. 78% of people say they’ve been convinced to purchase an app or piece of software because of a video. – Hubspot 

“Especially when your feature topic is complex or abstract, animation is capable of simplifying concepts and explaining them in a highly visual way (which our brains are better at interpreting). If you can’t easily point a camera at it, animation is the answer. It’s why you often see whiteboard videos that explain global logistics, or other animation styles to explain the inner-workings of a complex system or process.” – Popvideo 

Personalized Video

25% of marketers use personalized video in email marketing campaigns. – NGdata 

In a world where cold email response rate is around 1%, utilizing video has generated more replies and responses for more than 80% of people who use it. – Bombbomb 

“If you are making a personalized video, you can create a campaign to shoot the same content to a group of prospects and customize the tags like first name and other personal details by integrating with a CRM like Zapier. All you have to do is feed the user data.” – Videoform

Video Production Best Practices

Both Facebook and Instagram have Story videos available. Instagram Stories and Reels max out at 15 seconds, feed videos are at 60 seconds and IGTV videos at 60 minutes. Instagram feed videos are recommended at 26 seconds. –  Sprout Social 

Longer form video content (over 20 minutes in length) grew 66% in 2020. – Vidyard

2 minutes is the sweet spot. Engagement is steady up to 2 minutes, meaning that a 90-second video will hold a viewer’s attention as much as a 30-second video After that, the drop-off in engagement is significant. – Wistia 

On average, most people (40%) spend $0-500 on a typical video, with the overwhelming majority 97% spending less than $10,000. – Wyzowl 

Keeping videos structured and engaging helps to establish brand trust and audience interest. As outlined by Bombbomb, try using the “T.U.N.E.D.” method to grab viewer attention in the first three seconds of your video:

• Team — Involve team members.
• Unexpected — Add something unique your prospect isn’t anticipating.
• Name — Showcase your prospect’s name using a whiteboard.
• Emotion — Show emotion with your facial expression.
• Detail — Add personal details like your prospect’s company logo.

“Videos give consumers the opportunity to see how a product or service works in real life, discover any flaws before purchasing the item, and identify perks that they might not learn about in the text-based description. This content might also appear to be more authentic than a heavily edited product shot, which can boost a consumer’s trust in a brand or offering. Additionally, the vast majority of video consumers now strive to learn something new about an interest or hobby, rather than just using video to entertain themselves. This means marketers can harness educational videos in their strategy and offer consumers content that relates to their niche, while also marketing a brand or product.” – Hubspot 

There is no shortage of ways for brands to leverage video as part of a content strategy. It can play a role at all stages of the customer journey. As with any other medium, understanding your audience, goals, and channel will help to ensure your video content hits the mark.