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How Can You Prepare for the Future of Video Advertising?
The current corporate video landscape is being pulled in two directions at once. On one hand, companies realize the value of advertising video content and want to produce more of these videos. On the other, video ad production is facing headwinds from trends such as a de-emphasis on video production skills and lower investment in internal teams.
How can businesses make progress despite this paradox and launch video content marketing strategies that make sense for them? The answer may come from a technology-forward approach to video production, as well as collaboration with professional video marketers and production crews.
What trends are driving video ad usage today?
Companies know that video content works and they want to keep producing it. This much is clear from the latest video marketing statistics. A Wistia study revealed that 80% of companies want to up their video creation and 60% want to increase their investment.
From short form video content and seconds-long programmatic advertising to more in-depth digital marketing content like explainer video clips, it’s clear that leaders still see the value of video creation for connecting a brand with its target audience. This ongoing emphasis is complicated, however, in light of the roadblocks facing video production.
Advertising agencies and similar creative organizations are cutting staff, with the most recent Bureau of Labor statistics revealing a net job loss of 2,200 positions in the advertising and public relations space. With fewer and smaller agencies and a reduced number of workers learning video production best practices, companies will need to find new ways to keep the content machine humming along.
How can your business keep taking advantage of video ads?
A loss of infrastructure related to video ad creation and a desire to make more content are opposing forces that need a resolution. Fortunately, companies have multiple ways forward in the current climate, some based on technology and others more dependent on tactics.
AI technology
Generative AI is the hottest concept across numerous industries at the moment, and it has direct applicability to video content creation. With that said, actual AI use in video production may not resemble the “type text and receive video” magic present in tech demos.
Rather than producing videos whole-cloth through generative AI, creative teams are using tech tools as efficiency builders. This may mean asking a chatbot for help with concept ideation or using a speech recognition algorithm to produce the first draft of captions for a video. AI can lighten the load on creative professionals, providing an efficiency lifeline for understaffed companies.
User-generated content
In addition to leveraging generative AI, brands with small teams can bring their audiences into the creation process. Repurposing consumers’ own short form video content as part of a video marketing campaign is a way to stay active on social media platforms despite limited resources.
While user-generated content comes with risks, as the brand doesn’t maintain tight control over the materials, it can simultaneously encourage viewer engagement and ensure a steady stream of content. Even a company with no dedicated video marketers on staff can leverage this method.
Production partnerships
Perhaps the most direct way to overcome a lack of key video skills is to work with a third-party production business that has a trained team ready to step in and produce the necessary deliverables. This kind of partnership can be a one-off engagement or a lasting connection, over one campaign or many. In an era of de-emphasis on full-service agencies, there are still specialized video production businesses ready to produce content on demand.
Hiring an outside team of video production experts is not just a way to fill skills gaps. Since these professionals are dedicated video marketers, they can contribute technical and artistic feats that may have been impossible even with a mid-sized internal team. This can extend from on-location shots and drone photography to tech-infused solutions like augmented reality, interactive video content and cutting-edge animation.
Ready to embrace the future of video advertising?
A video marketing strategy is still a key piece of a modern business’s brand awareness strategy — the numbers confirm continued interest in producing content. Finding a way to keep that effort going during an era of skill gaps and cutbacks will be an individual decision for each business across industries.
By combining technology solutions, user outreach and production partnerships, you can design a video content marketing approach that suits the times and your brand’s unique requirements. This plan will take ingenuity, but the rewards are worth it.
Read our eBook for much more on the evolving state of corporate video.
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