According to Tubefilter.com, more than 500 hours of video content is uploaded to YouTube daily. That translates into the equivalent of over 82 years of video — every single day. Vidyard.com reports that 80 percent of businesses are spending more on video, most of which is uploaded and channelled through social media in posts and ad campaigns.
[More than 500 hours of video content is uploaded to YouTube daily.
That translates into the equivalent of over 82 years of video.]
Switching gears. Worldwide, digital ad spending eclipsed $280 Billion (Marketingland.com) and is expected to reach over half-trillion dollars by 2023 (emarketer.com). Video ad spending is projected to reach $103 Billion in 2023. It tapped out at $91 Billion in 2018 (Marketingdive.com). In 2018, online video viewers were on track to reach 200 million against TV audiences of 258 million.
How does this affect where video production dollars are going? Closer to home, according to the 2018 Canadian Media Producer’s Association Report (CMPA) dubbed “Profile 2018”, the production industry’s production volume reached just under $9 Billion. This includes feature film production volumes, which settled at $3.04 Billion, superseding television production at $2.73 Billion.
Switching gears again. It is only recently that media reports are beginning to reveal the scale of activity within the corporate video and digital world. Digital media projects in Canada accounted for $95.5 Million of the budgets spent in 2017/18 (CMPA Profile 2018), still small compared to budgets for feature films, documentaries and television programs; however, budgets in the latter three areas started to shrink in 2015/16. They have seen a little comeback since then, but remain lower than budgets spent in the first half of the decade.
It is difficult to find substantial data on production budgets invested in videos produced for corporate applications, TV commercials or digital ad campaigns. So how are those producers doing? According to several producers we talked to, it’s shrinking, in part owing to the democratization of video creation. Some have reported drops in volume by up to 50 percent. One of the reasons is that production is being handled either in-house, or by one-off smaller producers taking advantage of the new, leaner, video technology that allows them to shoot and edit with more creativity and smaller crews. In response to this, many traditional corporate and commercial video companies are either adding video content production to their roster or are reinventing themselves from stem to stern as video content suppliers.
[Video production activity in the traditional commercial and corporate world
has seen a drop in volume by as high as 50 percent.]
Chris Duncan is a 20+ years, award-winning veteran in the broadcast industry including 13 years at A-Channel/CITY-TV as News Director and two years as Program Manager at Shaw TV. He also operated as an independent commercial and corporate video producer for many years. Duncan joined Production World in 2017 to head up their video production department. Needless to say, he has seen a lot of change.
“We’ve seen stunning changes in both the quality of the equipment and the picture. 30 years ago a crew could consist of a guy with a 25-pound camera and a bulky videotape recorder, an audio and lighting technician plus a producer/reporter. Today we have much smaller gear that produces incredible images in HD or 4K. The editing software is lightning fast, intuitive and you can do it on your laptop. Instead of driving with your tape or using satellite to send your finished story or video to the studio or client you just upload it and hit the send button! The downside to this is it takes fewer people to do the job so there are a lot of broadcasters who have been forced out of the industry or have had to start their own companies.”
Production World Studio
Vidyard’s 2019 Video in Business Benchmark Report is a good read. They analyzed over 324,000 videos and the attending data to reveal some interesting things. The average video is shrinking in length; around four minutes in length. Audiences are spending more time watching those videos. Best day to post a video online? Thursday. A very telling stat is that small companies (fewer than 200 employees) are cranking out over 500 videos a year using “both internal and external video production resources.” The engagement of both video production resources by these small companies went up from 27 percent in 2017 to 51 percent. Last thing. Videos less than 60 seconds long have the highest “completion” rate — meaning viewers watch the whole video.
[Videos less than 60 seconds long have the highest “completion” rate — meaning viewers watch the whole video.]
Veterans of corporate and commercial video production will often make the following distinction between home-grown creative and production versus the professionally produced product. Simply put, it’s all about the level of knowledge and understanding about how advertising and marketing communications work, as well as the ability and experience to tell a story, pitch a product, or persuade a consumer.
The videos viewed with the greatest disdain by professionals are the “talking head” monologues produced by eager entrepreneurs or motivational-inspirational-holistic-guru wanna-bees. Although the stats are inconclusive, TubularInsights.com Online Video Report (although slightly dated having been published in 2017) indicates that sponsored videos in the ‘People and Blogs’ category ranked 4th on Facebook (248 million) and 7th on Youtube (48 million). OnPointVideo.ca pegged Vlog videos at 13 percent among the ten most popular video types in 2018.
[Sponsored videos in the ‘People and Blogs’ category
ranked 4th on Facebook (248 million) and 7th on Youtube (48 million).]
It’s easy to see the difference between videos produced professionally based on an informed strategy versus a video produced by an inexperienced, uniformed and, in some cases, unqualified producer (albeit well-equipped with technology). Digital manipulation can be sexy and seductive; however, looks only go so far. Just because producers can flash DSLRs around on sliders and plug in endless speed-ramping and time-remapping effects in editing doesn’t mean they know what they are doing in terms of — COMMUNICATION (caps intentional).
Notwithstanding the pervasive lack of communication expertise in the market, professional producers have to work harder to compete against producers who have emerged from within a democratized video production sector.
“It’s a challenging market to be sure”, says Chris Duncan. “When everyone is walking around with a video camera in their pocket that’s serious competition! The good news is your phone is not pro gear and most people aren’t professional photographers (or editors). The most common mistake is poor audio quality because amateurs tend to use the microphone on their devices instead of a high end audio package.”
In the end, the most effective videos are the simplest ones as most qualified professionals will tell you. Although technology may offer more in the way of production capacity and effects et al, ultimately, less is more when it comes to producing videos that actually work.
Fade to black.
