Organizations continue to see video as a viable form of content. The latest State of Video report [download page] from Demand Metric and Vidyard finds that even more organizations are seeing its value, with 76% of the marketers and sales professionals surveyed – largely targeting B2B or B2B and B2C equally – saying that video is an important form of content for their organization, compared to 71% in 2019.
Although video is being used across most digital channels, 2020 saw fewer organizations using it on what might be considered the usual channels. In 2019, 82% of respondents reported using video on social media, while the same percentage used it on websites. In 2020, the percentage of organizations using video on those channels dropped to 73% and 70%, respectively.
However, COVID-19 has necessitated a shift to digital channels and away from more traditional ways of doing business. With more organizations moving from in-person events to webinars in 2020, some 56% of respondents say they used video on recorded webinars during the year, up from 51% in 2019.
The biggest lift in video usage came in sales and customer conversations. The use of video for this purpose almost doubled from the year before (56% in 2020 vs. 29% in 2019). Indeed, this use of video ranks #2 among those respondents that work in sales, with social media being the most used by that role.
Along these lines, 2020 saw more organizations investing in video types such as webinars (51% vs. 44% in 2019), one-to-one videos (40% vs. 7% in 2019), internal communications (29%, new this year) and training (47%, also new this year).
Video Performance Improves
Demand Metric and Vidyard’s survey shows that organizations have continued to see improvements in video performance.
About three-quarters report that, compared to other types of content they used, video performs much better (23%) or somewhat better (53%) in terms of driving conversions. This is up from 59% who claimed the same back in 2018.
Furthermore, close to half (48%) of those surveyed say that ROI from video is getting better. While this is stable from last year (47%), it’s encouraging to see that the share of those who say that ROI from video is unknown has dropped from 48% in 2018 to 29% in 2020.
Integrating Viewing Data
The end of 2019 saw the majority of B2B marketers making data analytics and measurement a top priority for the year to come, with about half saying the same for marketing automation platforms.
These priorities can be seen, at least somewhat, in the increased share of respondents in this survey who said they integrated their video viewing data into a marketing automation platform or CRM and are exploiting the data (13% vs. 8% in 2019). Nevertheless, a larger share (20%) said they had integrated their video viewing data but were not exploiting the data from it.
As for the remaining share of organizations, although 21% overall said they have no integration plans, more than 4 in 10 reported that they plan to integrate viewing data within 12 months (22%) or sometime (24%).
The full report can be downloaded here.
About the Data: Findings are based on a survey of 302 respondents, the majority being from marketing (50%) or sales. Respondents represent B2B (52%), B2C (15%) or B2B and B2C mixed (33%) organizations.
