CTRL+SHIFT+VIDEO: What and Why of the Video Phenomenon

Have you watched a video in the last 24 hours? Unless you're on a digital detox, the answer in all likelihood is a yes.

In the last few years, there has been a fundamental shift in our information consumption patterns, with video emerging as the winning format. That’s not surprising if you look at the inherent strength of the format. Thanks to its visual and aural elements, video builds an instant connect as it engages more senses than text or image ever can. It triggers emotions. It's rich. It's all-encompassing. It can include text, music, photographs, links, and even podcasts.

Video is empathetic – it informs the user the exact time it’ll need, right at the beginning. Consuming video is a breeze. And as something perceived as being effortful to create, video is naturally seen as being more valuable, too. So while the widespread statistic that a minute of video is worth 1.8 million words is more heuristic than scientific, video is definitely worth a lot.

Here’s how video is proving itself

Engagement

Video generate the highest levels of engagement. (Courtesy: Hubspot, The Future of Content Marketing, 2016)

Traffic

1. According to Cisco, video accounts for about 80% of all consumer Internet traffic.
2. During your 8 hours of sleep, so much of video content is uploaded to YouTube that you could spend the rest of your waking life watching it.
3. Facebook generates over 8 billion daily video views. That’s 1 video watched on an average by every living human being on the planet.

Business impact

1. 90% of users say that product videos are helpful in the decision process and 64% of users are more likely to buy a product online after watching a video (Source: Hubspot)
2. Video in an email leads to 200-300% increase in click-through rates (Source: Hubspot)
3. Including a video on a landing page can increase conversion rates by 80% (Source: Unbounce)
4. Social video generates 1200% more shares than text and images combined. Source: SmallBizTrends)
5. ComScore says that adding a video to your website can increase the chances of appearing on google's first page a whopping 53 times. (Source: Vidyard blog)

Companies like GoPro and Red Bull hinge their marketing strategy heavily on video content to garner billions of dollars of free media coverage and search engine SOV (share of voice).

[Watch a summary of this article below]

How did we get to the tipping point of video explosion?

For any large-scale shift in consumer behavior to happen, many things have to fall in place. Let’s understand what has enabled the dominance of video.

Creation

Everyone has a camera. Everyone is a producer. DIY editing tools are ubiquitous. Even the professional video editing software costs have come down 40X in the last 15 years. To solve for scale and speed, DIY accelerated production platforms like Wochit and crowdsourced production platforms like Genero have emerged.

Hosting & streaming

Storage costs have shrunk 20,000 times in two decades. Compression and streaming technologies have improved significantly. WhatsApp’s compression is magical. It can shrink a video to 1/20th the size with little compromise on quality. That too, in a jiffy.

Bandwidth

This was the last straw. In 2016, the cost of data in India as a percentage of GDP per capita fell under the 2% threshold, qualifying internet access in India to be in the category of ‘widespread affordability’. (Source: Kleiner Perkins)

Obviously, Reliance Jio has been a major enabling force. The reduced data costs coupled with massive smartphone penetration has increased the data consumption 9X between 2016 and 2017. In Moradabad, a Tier 2 city in Uttar Pradesh better known for its brassware, video consumption grew 22X in the said timeframe.

So is it video all the way for marketers?

There’s a lot going for video. But then, should marketers completely pivot to video? Not really. After all, if you’ve read till here, we're in the irony together. Video does have its limitations and pitfalls. But that’s for another one. Till then, happy watching!