Introduction
We’ve all heard the awe-inspiring statistics- over 12,500 hours of video are uploaded to Youtube every single day. People spend 100 minutes a day watching videos. Video content was over 80% of all consumer internet traffic1…and so on. The point is, video content is incredibly important for all modern brands, customers and channels. No wonder then, that video production demand is higher than ever before. In this blog lets examine the demand for video production in the current Era.
Demand for Pro Videos
Gone are those days when youtube videos were shot in selfie mode on the cellphone camera and uploaded without editing. Today’s popular content channels are professionally run. Behind every video there is a lot of research, preparation, scripting, recording, and editing. It’s true that a lot of videos are still home videos. A single content creator or a small team of two or three people can make really nice looking videos which work in genres like reaction videos.
However professionals who make a lot of money as content creators also put in a lot of money in the production process. The most successful youtube content creator in history, Jimmy Donaldson, also known as Mr. Beast, commands a youtube following of over 100 million subscribers. In an interview in 2022, he revealed that he spends upwards of USD 1 Million on every video! Obviously that’s not the norm for most professional content creators. Nevertheless suffice it to say that any content creator who wants sufficient views to make money or gain popularity from the videos will create Pro videos. With 12K+ hours of videos posted each day and the average video length being 4 minute. That’s a LOT of videos that are being produced and edited daily!
Types of Pro Videos
The entire video content universe. From multi-starrer full length feature films to a 5 second social media post falls into one of five categories: Documentary, Entertainment, Educational, Informational, and Promotion. Content creation across all categories has increased sharply in recent years. The most interesting phenomenon is about Documentaries. Those may evoke memories of grainy black & white films from the 1940s with staccato speech voiceovers, or more recently, scientific documentaries about a disaster in some part of the world. However, documentary are a USD 11 Billion annual industry and expected to rise to $15 Billion by 20273.
The interesting thing is, while full-length feature documentaries of an hour or more have sharply decreased, shorter documentaries (~20 minutes) on dedicated youtube channels have exploded. The really interesting trend is how the documentary style film has become the hottest new trend in brand marketing. Brands constantly innovate with ways to engage audiences and build trust. A documentary-style video has a pretty distinctive style. It focuses on facts, openness, realism, and most importantly, creating an emotional connection. That’s just about perfect for any marketing videos. Whether it is to create brand awareness or introduce a new product or service. This explains the fact that documentaries now account for 18% of all new releases, up from 5% a few years ago!
On social media, the most popular types of videos5 are Tutorials and Explainers; Product Reviews, Demos and Testimonials; Live Entertainment; and so called “Behind the Scenes” videos. There are dozens of sub-categories of each type, such as “Listicles” (various types of “top ten” lists, for example). Which run the entire gamut from informational videos to help people make choices, to pure entertainment. The sheer number of styles is mind-boggling. No wonder production specialists are so much in demand! Entire companies have sprung up to address this demand explosion, from professional video production houses to software companies that help a particular type of editing.
Conclusion
At Manipal Digital we can talk video all day long. That’s because we have been producing videos for commercial marketing and EdTech for years! We do everything from motion graphics adn animation to drone videography and AR content. Our work features in numerous ad films, explainers, e-Learning content, and short-length eCommerce videos including testimonials and how-to’s. Tucked away in a remote (but with a great view!) part of our workplace sits a specialized video production team with access to all possible hardware and software, oodles of experience, and tons of great stories! Interested? Contact us today!
