Like everything else in its path, AI is reshaping how companies are making marketing videos more inclusive and accessible. New research from business video marketing platform Wistia reveals that the use of AI to enhance video accessibility dramatically increased in 2023. In addition, despite economic uncertainty over the past year, businesses see value in video and it remains a top priority in marketing strategies.
AI is making video more inclusive and far-reaching
The firm’s annual 2024 State of Video Report, which compiles user data from over 90 million videos on the company’s platform as well as a customer survey of 2,000 professionals, finds that with video usage and consumption growing, companies are focusing on increasing the accessibility of video content. AI has been a main driver in making videos more accessible with 59 percent more videos seeing a higher accessibility score in 2023 than in 2022. In terms of factors that enhance video accessibility, in 2023, video captions saw the most significant growth, with over 254 percent more businesses having closed captions on their videos than in 2022. More than half (59 percent) of companies using AI tools say they are most useful for auto-generating captions or transcripts.
The use of captions goes beyond increasing accessibility scores. According to TikTok, the presence of captions leads to a 95 percent jump in brand affinity, a 58 percent bump in recall, a 31 percent improvement in likability, and a 25 percent uplift in uniqueness, making video content more far-reaching and enhancing the overall audience experience.
“It’s clear brands are experimenting with AI in video creation and optimization,” said Chris Savage, CEO and co-founder of Wistia, in a news release. “Given consumers in 2023 watched more videos than ever before, video inclusiveness has emerged as a top priority for brands. Unlocking the power of AI to create greater inclusivity in digital experiences stands at the forefront of the video production industry. We expect this to continue to evolve and shape how we create video content and how people engage with digital experiences.”
Users recognize the value of video despite roadblocks
Eighty percent of businesses said they want more video content, and 60 percent of businesses want to invest more money to make it. Despite economic uncertainty and limited resources throughout 2023, organizations still recognize the value of video, with only 4 percent reporting they’ll likely have fewer resources for video in 2024.
With nearly 100 percent of businesses saying that video is an important part of their marketing strategy, challenges still remain to create videos. The top challenges are time and bandwidth with 61 percent of businesses saying that’s their biggest hurdle, followed by 44 percent of companies saying team size, resources, and technical capability. Most video creators are using simple tools accessible to anyone with a laptop, with 57 percent of businesses using screen and webcam recorders
Shorter videos aren’t necessarily more engaging
Though engagement tends to drop significantly when video length goes over 5 minutes, our data showed that the engagement rate for videos between 1-5 minutes is almost the same, no matter the length. This gives brands the freedom to experiment with longer videos. Platforms like Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and LinkedIn have expanded time limits for videos beyond two minutes, providing opportunities to create longer videos while keeping engagement rates high.
The data revealed that consumers prefer instructional over promotional video content. Instructional content under 5 minutes had 2x the engagement of promotional content of the same length. According to TikTok, videos that show products in use see a +25 percent uplift in recall, +23 percent in ad likeability, +65 percent in brand affinity, and +18 percent in consideration.
Even as instructional videos get longer, it maintains a higher level of engagement on average. As brands consider types of video content to produce or strategies for engaging with influencers, explainer videos lead to higher engagement compared to promotional brand videos.
Download the full report here.
The 2024 State of Video Report was created from real user data on the Wistia platform and feedback from an in-depth customer survey. Wistia analyzed over 90 million videos and over 100,000 businesses on their platform between January 1, 2023, and December 31, 2023, to build this report. This year’s report also included a customer survey, which solicited feedback from over 2,000 businesses using video to provide qualitative information that contextualizes user data. The survey was conducted online between November 16th to December 15th, 2023.
