Businesses leverage AI to make video content more inclusive, engaging, and far-reaching

Wistia, a leading video marketing platform for businesses, today unveiled its 2024 State of Video Report. Compiling user data from over 90 million videos on the company’s platform as well as a customer survey of 2,000 professionals, Wistia’s annual report revealed that the use of artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance video accessibility dramatically increased in 2023. Further, 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

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% 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% more businesses having closed captions on their videos than in 2022. More than half (59%) 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% jump in brand affinity, a 58% bump in recall, a 31% improvement in likability, and a 25% 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. “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.”

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Users recognize the value of video despite roadblocks

Eighty percent of businesses said they want more video content, and 60% 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% reporting they’ll likely have fewer resources for video in 2024.

With nearly 100% 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% of businesses saying that’s their biggest hurdle, followed by 44% of companies saying team size, resources, and technical capability. Most video creators are using simple tools accessible to anyone with a laptop, with 57% 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.

Our 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% uplift in recall, +23% in ad likeability, +65% in brand affinity, and +18% 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.

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