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2025 State of Video Live

​​Broadcasting live from Wistia headquarters in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It's the 2025 State of Video Live show. Dive deep into the trends, insights, performance benchmarks, and all the data highlights from our new State of Video report. And now, your hosts, Sam Balter and Taylor Corrado. Hello, and welcome to Wistia's 2025 State of Video Live. I'm Sam Balter, Head of Content. And I'm Taylor Corrado, Senior Director of Brand Marketing. We're thrilled to be here and have a great show in store for you today. This year, we analyzed millions of videos, surveyed over a thousand marketers, and harnessed the power of AI to deliver some serious insights. First off, businesses love video. Only five percent of companies are even thinking about shrinking their budgets with over forty percent looking to increase them. It's clear more and more marketers are shifting their content to be video first. Every business knows they need video. The question is how do you scale it? With insights from partners who make lots of videos like Superside and Dropbox, it's a delicate combination of people and machines. On the people side, in house video teams are growing. In 2023, sixty three percent of companies created videos in house. That number jumped to seventy one percent in 2024. The number just keeps growing year after year. More marketing teams are bringing video in house or are picking up the camera and taking on the responsibility themselves. In the past, marketing teams were blowing their video budgets on a creative agency to make one big fancy highly produced video. Now, it's all about scale. Using agencies for cut downs, variations, resizing for social platforms, and turning one video into many. Let's talk about the robot elephant in the room, artificial intelligence. Lot of people are using AI to scale video production. Over forty percent are using AI today, which is more than double from last year's seventeen percent. Be sure to stick around because later in the show, AI finally sits down to talk with us in a Wistia exclusive interview you won't wanna miss. No, you won't. Now, just making a lot of videos isn't gonna cut it. The pressure to make it pop is growing. Attention is hard to come by. For the fifth year in a row, the average engagement rate has declined and this year was the biggest drop yet, especially for the shorties. And by that, I mean videos under five minutes, which dropped ten percent in engagement rate. With the state of video report, our goal is to inspire you to make more videos, to make better videos, and to do it without losing your mind. So we surveyed marketers, gathered data from Wistia's platform, and spoke with folks from leading brands like Dropbox, SEMrush, 3Play Media, and Superside to produce our annual report. If you haven't seen the report yet, download it now. It's packed with data to help you make better decisions with your video marketing strategy. Now if you have any questions, reactions, or just wanna say nice things about my shirt, drop it in the chat. We got Wistian standing by. And if you have a question, hit the q and a section in the sidebar and we'll do our best to get to it at the end of the show. We also wanna get a sense of the level expertise we have in the room today. So we're gonna be launching a poll to see where you're at with your video marketing. Let us know where you land. We have a packed agenda for you today. We'll be sharing some highlights from this year's report, and we have some special guests and Roland segments to add some color and bring the data to life. Speaking of data, to really help us crunch the numbers, let's kick it over to our overworked numbers junkie, the duke of digits himself, Chris Lavigne at the data desk. The Data Desk We've run the queries and double checked the charts. The numbers are in. We crunched them and they crunched back. Welcome to the data desk. For the first time, we have data on how video performs based on where it lives on your website. And let's just say, it looks like a lot of you are making some highly questionable placement choices. I mean, sure, one in three companies puts a video on their homepage. It's a solid move. First impressions matter. But only twenty percent are using video on their product pages, and just sixteen percent have video on their blogs. Talk about a missed conversion. That's prime real estate collecting digital dust. So we asked, how do these placements actually perform? Well, videos on case case study pages, just eight percent play rate. Yikes. But video galleries, contact pages, and educational content are seeing play rates over thirty percent. That's some high traffic data right there. The takeaway? Location, location, location. Where you embed your videos matter just as much as what's in them. Now the data doesn't stop there. We've got a seismic shift in engagement numbers. Video engagement is down seven percent across the board. This is the biggest drop in four years. And short form content is taking the biggest hit. Videos between three to five minutes saw a ten percent drop in engagement. Now in a shocking twist, thirty plus minute videos only dipped three percent. So what's going on here? It's not about shrinking attention spans, it's more about rising expectations. People don't want shorter videos. They want better ones. If your content doesn't deliver in the first seconds, they're gone. But there's one format bucking the trend, how to videos. Short how tos under a minute earned an average of eighty two percent engagement. Even long form how tos up to thirty minutes are holding strong at fifty eight percent. That engagement is no graphing matter. So here's your data desk download. Your homepage needs video. Your product page is begging for a video. Have a blog post? Put a video on it. Have a video? Put it on your blog. And if you have a bunch of videos, well, that's just a collection waiting to happen. Because in the end, it's not just about putting video on your site, it's about placing it where it placing it where it makes a data driven impact. As my great aunt Florence Forcastinson used to mutter while sorting spreadsheets, the future's uncertain, but the model's tight. Stay curious, stay analytical, and remember, don't just follow the data, let it lead. Optimizing Video for Lead Generation Oh, Chris. You never miss an opportunity to mention your great aunt Florence. It looks like marketers are missing some real opportunities to put video on their homepage and get more plays. Speaking of marketers missing opportunities, over half of marketers are spending more time creating videos than promoting them. How do marketers even know how their content is performing if they don't promote it? You all put so much effort into your videos, you should be promoting each video multiple times. Sam, what's the old saying? Create once, promote forever? I think it's help a man promote a video once gets views for a day, teach a man to promote a video and he will get views forever. I don't think that's a saying. Moving on. Marketers missing opportunities breaks our hearts here at Wistia. Marketers are not just missing out on views, they're missing out on optimizing their videos so those views convert into dollars. Building a content library with webinars, how to guides, and product videos is just the beginning. The real magic happens when you turn those videos into powerful lead generation tools using interactive player features. With Wistia's built in tools like calls to action, lead capture forms, and annotation links, our data says that depending on where you put your CTA, you can achieve a conversion rate up to an impressive fifty eight percent. For advice on where to put that CTA, let's turn to my friend from Clear Communications. What do you think, LaQuita? You really wanna put your call to action in two different places. The first, of course, being at the end, the final thought that you leave them with is very, very important that you place a call to action there. And then the second place is actually, if you have a longer video, you wanna put a call to action somewhere in the middle. It can kind of tease them a little bit and also keep them hanging on until the end of the video. But like LaQuita said, success isn't just about using these interactive features. It's about using them strategically. [State of Video Hotline] Uh-oh. You know what that sound means. We're taking fake callers because the Stata Video Live hotline is open. Call (617) 203-2031. That's six one seven two zero three two zero three one. And, oh, looks like we have our first caller, Tiffany, from Cambridge, Massachusetts. Welcome to the hotline. Oh, wow. Thanks, Sam. So I keep hearing about lead capture forms, but are they actually worth the hassle? I mean, syncing with the CRM, prompting viewers to enter an email seems like a lot to ask. Tiffany, Tiffany, we get it. Lead forms could seem like extra effort, but here's the kicker. While fewer marketers are using them, these days, those who do are seeing an eleven percent increase in conversions compared to last year. Yeah, Tiffany. Sam is right. Lead forms are pulling an average conversion rate of twenty four percent. And depending on the video length and placement, that number can swing anywhere from a tiny one percent to a game changing fifty eight percent. Wow. Fifty eight percent? That's actually kind of huge. So where's the best place to put one? For the best results, avoid short videos. Lead forms tend to work better mid roll in longer videos where your audience is already engaged. Yeah. If your content keeps them watching, they'll be way more likely to fill out that form. Thanks, Tiffany. Let's go to our next caller on the hotline. Colin from Cambridge, Massachusetts. You're on the air. Oh, wow. Yeah. So, like, I'm making short videos, like, under a minute, and I, like, need my CTA to actually, like, do something. Where's, like, the best spot? It's a great question, Colin. If your video is under sixty seconds, the sweet spot for a CTA is right up front. Up front, Yeah, Colin. CTAs placed in the first quarter of a short video can convert forty percent of viewers. Forty percent? That's solid. That's really solid. It is. But remember, longer videos are a different game. Speaking of, let's take one more call. Delphine from Cambridge, you're on the line. Hey, Sam. Hey, Taylor. So I make three to five minute videos, and I don't wanna throw in my CTA too early and scare people off. What's the move here? Delphine, you're thinking strategically, and we love it. For longer videos, your best bet is the second quarter. That's where the CTA still pulls in a solid twenty percent conversion rate. Exactly. Early enough to catch engaged viewers, but not so soon that they feel rushed. That makes sense. Okay. CTAs in the second quarter. Got it. Thanks, Sam and Taylor, and thanks, Wistia. Anytime, Delphine. Remember, everyone, whether it's a lead form or a CTA, placement is everything. And with that, the hotline is closed. [State of Video Hotline] You know, all those calls are about interactive elements on videos, but that's just one way to make your videos on your website shine. The other thing you need to consider is video and search. The Impact of Video on Search Results Yes. According to exclusive data from our friends at SEMrush, search results with a video thumbnail now make up a whopping thirty percent of all organic search results. Shortboard videos in search have increased a hundred and eighty three percent in the last two years. Now marketers need videos in all shapes and sizes to feed the social beast, and they also need videos optimized for search. No surprise that over forty percent of companies are making at least one video per week, and almost a hundred percent of marketers are really struggling to keep up. No one knows this better than our friend Pieter at Superside. Let's roll the clip. So what I think we're observing at Superside is that we are past the point where brands need just one video. They need fifty. They need them for different channels, for different audiences, for different platforms, for different stages of the funnel, and and that's just the baseline now. And, honestly, I think the smartest brands get it. Like, you don't host a webinar anymore just to check off a box and and and post a replay out out of it on social. On the contrary, like, that's just gonna feed your entire month of marketing with content. Like, you can create snippets. You can create memes. You can post things on social out of it. And I feel like that's where actually AI and this, like, modular editing and and and using all those new functionalities actually comes into play because you can strategically repurpose content in so many more ways than it was actually, possible in the past. With all this demand, who or what can marketers turn to for help? Well, that's a perfect segue into the most anticipated interview of the decade. Let's take a look. Wistia Exclusive Interview with AI For years, it has remained in the shadows. Powerful, mysterious, and according to some, deeply unsettling. But today, in a Wistia exclusive, AI finally sits down to talk. Why Wistia? Because no one understands video like we do. And when AI wanted to talk about the future of video, it knew exactly where to go. Thanks for being here. I have to ask, why now? Why agree to this interview? The data suggested this would make me look cool. Look cool. So that's the reason. Yeah. Fedora hats, black coffee. Research suggests that humans respect cool. And AI is getting cooler. Forty one percent of professionals already use AI in video production, up from just eighteen percent last year. Another nineteen percent say they plan to start soon. AI is becoming a bigger part of video production. People are using it to create visuals, generate assets, whole scenes even. That's a lot of responsibility. How are you handling it? I'm I'm doing my best. Are you surprised by how quickly people have adopted you? Yes. I thought it would take longer, but the prompting, it's nonstop all day, every day. Twenty eight percent of professionals now use or plan to use AI generated visuals. AI is making production faster and more scalable. AI, let me be blunt. You're not always the answer. Sometimes, you mess things up. Wouldn't you agree? Yes. I'm not perfect, but I can make a lot of things better and easier. Like what? What do people ask you for the most? Language, captions, voice dubbing, translation. I think they appreciate it. I am, and I just did. Marketers agree. AI is most useful for captions, dubbing, and translation, making video more accessible and expanding global reach. Some people say you're just a tool, that humans still drive the creative process. Yes. I'm a tool, like the wheel or electricity. You're comparing yourself to electricity? Yes. Of course. Electricity changed everything. And AI is changing everything too. Nearly nine in ten marketers use it for video creation. Things like scripting and dubbing. The rest rely on it for distribution. Leveraging AI for things like captions and metadata. Final question. Some people think AI is coming for their jobs. Should they be concerned? No. Humans are invaluable. Your ideas and creativity are what make me powerful. It's a partnership. Let me put it another way. If there was one job you'd completely replace, what would it be? After analyzing ten thousand career paths, market trends, and redundancy factors, the most replaceable profession is a television interviewer who asks structured but emotionally compelling questions. Probability of full automation, ninety nine point eight seven percent. AI is reshaping video. It helps creators move faster, reach wider audiences, and push the limits of what's possible. At Wistia, we're embracing it in our products and in our content because the future of video isn't just about AI. It's about what we can build together. Wow. Riveting stuff. AI Dubbing That is some hard hitting journalism. Taylor, do you have a favorite AI feature? I have to say the AI powered dubbing and translation feature. It's amazing how AI has made it so much more efficient and affordable to localize your videos. Love that dubbing is becoming more accessible. Ever wondered what your video would sound like in another language? Now's your chance. We'll use Wistia's AI powered dubbing to translate the first sixty seconds of your video. We're gonna drop a link in the chat where you can submit your video and tell us what your preferred language is. But hurry, we're only going to dub the first fifty entries. Hey, Sam. What's your favorite AI feature? Me? I'm overworked. I'm burning it at both ends. I got people breathing down my back for video clips, blog posts, social posts, everything in between. That's why I love using AI to repurpose longer videos, particularly webinars. Although eighty nine percent of marketers repurpose webinar content into clips, only one in five marketers use webinars to grow their content library by creating blog posts or making collections of webinar content. According to our data, webinars are rated the second most impactful video type for marketers, right below product videos. So it's clear that webinars are making a huge impact on businesses marketing goals. In September, Wistia The Webinar Wizard introduced the world to the magical powers of the webinar wizard. Don't know what we're talking about? Here's a reminder. Local marketer Stephanie Yates is making headlines for what is being hailed as the greatest webinar in the world. That brings us to our next segment featuring Wistia's very own social media manager, Frank Emanuele, who is, as he keeps reminding us, in his wizard era. Take a look. Hear ye, hear ye, video marketers alike. Today, I bring you a spell more powerful than any magic I've conjured. A spell that unveils the hidden data and sacred insights buried deep within the realm of webinars. Did you know that almost three quarters of webinar views happen live? And sixty five percent of people who sign up for a webinar actually show up? And of those who do, fourteen percent actively participate in the chat. And fear not, noble ones, for webinars possess the lifespan of a spellbound phoenix rising anew from digital ashes. Time and time again, their magic lingering long after the final moment has passed. While many see webinars as lead machines, only one in five marketers use them to grow their content library. Despite being gold mines for social clips, blogs, emails, and much, much more. Yep. Webinars are videos too. And who commands these grand digital spectacles? These arcane gatherings of light, sound, and lead generation most wondrous. Only forty percent of companies have a dedicated webinar manager and still run webinars on lean budgets around one to ten k per year. The weird thing is marketers agree that webinars are some of the most impactful content just behind product videos. From lead generation to repurposing content, imagine the impact your webinars can have with just a bit more investment. Now take with you these powerful insights and sacred truths and step forward, brave marketers. The path to webinar mastery lies ahead, ready for those bold enough to follow it. State of Video Live Wrap Up Wow. Thank you, Frank. Don't you mean the webinar wizard? Oh, sorry. Webinar wizard. Yes. As we just saw, webinars are alive and thriving. With most views happening live, content staying relevant for months, and marketers repurposing the magic across channels. Hey, Taylor. Have you checked out Wistia's webinar guidebook? You mean this old thing? I never leave home without it. This ancient relic with timeless wisdom is available today. We'll drop a link in the chat and you can order your free copy. Well, we've crunched the numbers, talked to the robots, summoned the wizard, and maybe, just maybe, helped you rethink your video strategy. From lead forums to dubbing, it's clear. Making the video is just the beginning. What you do with it, that's where the magic happens. And if you need a little help when it comes to hosting, posting, creating, editing, analyzing, going live, you name it, go ahead and book a Wistia demo. And with that, let's tackle some q and a. Light up the q and a tab in the sidebar, and we'll answer as many questions as we can. Now let's morph from our prerecorded selves into our present selves in three, two, one. Preparing to morph. Live Q&A Alright. Hello. Hope everybody enjoyed the show. Thank you so much for joining. We're gonna jump to q and a and dive into a bunch of questions in just a second. I just wanted to to launch, like, a quick poll just to see what were some of the most interesting parts of state of video for you. So poll will just appear in just a second here, but hope everybody liked everything, enjoyed all the segments, like the wizards, like the robots. Like If you've got any questions in the meantime, feel free to throw them in the q and a panel. We'll start answering them, right after this poll. Yeah. So, Paul, I'm just gonna add this guy to the stage here. We just wanna know, like, what was most interesting to you? Looks like, oh, interactive features gaining pretty quick. Oh, nice. Staying pretty even between all of them. The AI and video production stuff is definitely interesting. AI starting to win it out. This is great to see. Yeah. Thanks, everyone. Keep going with that poll. We're gonna move right into questions. We've got, a great amount of time, so we'll get through all of them, hopefully. So the first is from Moe. Which platforms and video formats is Wistia seeing the most success with with for Wistia's marketing? So I'm assuming this is social platforms. We're seeing a lot of success on LinkedIn with especially with their video features being so prominent now. But we've been using video as our first form of content on across all of our social platforms. TikTok has been really successful for us, with a variety of different types of content and different lengths. But we've really just been testing a lot and seeing what's working. And so I would say LinkedIn and TikTok are definitely performing. Cool. Let's go to the next question. Alright. Do you have any resources on how you plan and set up the production of your webinars? This is from Taylor Ripley. Yeah. I can drop a few resources in the chat of things that we do. We're really into using run of show docs, where I could share some examples of those, and also just having a general webinar checklist. For planning this webinar, though, I noticed we did get some, like, questions in the chat that are basically, is this segment prerecorded? And so for that, we've done, it's a little bit of a different planning process for prerecorded segments versus using, like, a totally live webinar. But we find for these, like, high production shows that we really wanna keep the audience engaged. We wanna cut out all of the fluff. We wanna make it a really, really tight 20 minutes that's super impactful. So we intend to just go for most of the prerecorded stuff there. But I could share some resources in the chat and just a little bit of, useful pieces of information. Yeah. And our webinar guidebook, which you saw in there, has a ton of content. I think it's eighty eight pages of content of how to plan and prep and produce your webinar and also even the follow-up process. So definitely check that out. There's a physical version you can order and get sent right to you, or there's a PDF you can download and get the content today. Thanks. Thanks. Alright. Let next question is from Lindsey. Where will an offer show up in the webinar? I don't see a tab in the chat, which I'm glad. But I would like to know if the CTA will show up on the screen or in the actual chat. Yeah. I could take that one. So you might have seen some of the CTAs during the webinar appear in the upper right hand corner. So that's usually where the CTAs will, hang out. You could control how long they're visible for and take them on and off stage. And then, otherwise, if you drop any kind of links in the chat, like we dropped a few of them, you'll see it renders an image of it as well. So I think general just best practices would probably be to just do both. So it's like one you have at the moment, get people's attention to click the button, and then in the chat, if they missed it, it didn't click it in time. Yeah. And you can pin, comments or chats to the top of the chat. So if you wanna have one resource there, the whole webinar, you can actually do that too. Repurposing Webinar Content Alright. Sarah, how do you recommend sharing thirty a thirty minute webinar recording with current and potential customers? So we really love taking webinars, like, the full webinar length and cutting it down into little clips. So it depends on what type of content you're you're creating for your webinar. Let's say it's a product related webinar. Taking out segments of that webinar and actually breaking it down into little clips are great to share on social for potential customers. We've seen that work really well for both thought leadership and product content. And then actually, like, sharing the full recording. Mhmm. Embedding it on your website, embedding it on your blog with, like, a full recap of the webinar is another way we've seen it, and done it before. How else do we repurpose our webinar content? For me, it's like since I do a lot of managing of the blog, a lot of what we're doing is taking webinar content and turning it into blog post and basically using it for SEO rich versions of it. So, like, an example is last year's state of video report. We have an article that's video marketing stats, And that's, like, a very SEO focused one. Then we embed the full webinar on top of that and then add in either, like, lead capture forms or CTAs to download the full report. So, like, normally, we see webinars get kind of views for about, like, four months afterwards. But if you're adding it to a high traffic blog post, you're gonna extend out those views for months and months. Awesome. Video SEO Strategies How about this next one from Dan? I'm just gonna add it to the stage here because it has kinda two parts to it. Can you speak at all to how you set up short form videos for success when it comes to search results, with what video SEO components are falling between the, between the cracks? So I think that's it came up very quick during the, during the live show. But one of the things we're noticing is from data from SEMrush, you can see that more and more of search results are videos, and there's specific carousels for short form videos or short form videos are showing up as their own things. I think the main thing is, like, one, you wanna just do make sure you're doing the basics, metadata descriptions, like clear titles and all of that kind of pieces of it. The second thing that's a little bit more recent is Google made some changes that it's more likely to rank a page for a video if that video is the sole focus of the page. And so that's why using things like channels or collections, which create, like, individual landing pages for each video is a super helpful way to make sure that the videos you're putting on your site are showing up in search. Yeah. And, also, if you're thinking about videos that are meant for SEO, you want to think about a YouTube strategy. You wanna make sure that you're ranking on YouTube because those are coming up even higher in search results as well now, because YouTube is part of Google and they're going to give weight to those videos over your own on your site in some cases. Yeah. No. That's a great that's a great point. Yeah. Scaling Video Production Alright. Next up is from Megan. What are strategies you've used to scale up video production without sacrificing quality or audience engagement? So we use AI. Well, we use a lot of AI for our video production in terms of scaling it, and the way we use it is in, like, the preproduction phase around, like, scripting, you know, coming up with notes for the the the panelists if we're doing a webinar. We're using it also in the postproduction process for editing and clipping. So there's features within Wistia that help us do this. So there's, like, our social clips, which actually pull out they scan the whole video recording. Let's say it's a hour long webinar and pull out AI highlights, that you can edit and tweak a bit, here and there, but that that helps us create a lot more video content out of one long form video. Yeah. And I think overall for us, it's like we're also just thinking more and more when we go into something about how it could be repurposed for shorter form or how it could be cut up. So even this, we're looking at it as like, oh, there's a lot of these segments that we'll be able to break into social clips and other pieces as well. Yeah. So thinking about it even before you create the video of how you might use it afterwards. Alright. Let's go to the one from Lindsey. Do you all have plans to add evergreen features? For example, the ability to upload chat roles, use a recording to create an on demand webinar, submit a question to an inbox to be answered by a human versus just in the q and a section. I'm not a hundred percent sure what chat roles are, but I know that a lot of our features within Wistia within Wistia and within our webinar feature have on demand webinar features. So you can, have pre recorded sessions like today's and actually play them without even going on and going live. We have the question q and a panel that you all are using right now. I'm not sure, do you know what chat roles are? I I honestly do not know what chat roles are. Follow-up with what chat roles are, we can maybe answer that a little bit more specifically. Alright. Next question is from Caleb. What are some new and unique ways companies are converting leads with video? I love this question. So, we've seen a lot of people, we know that a lot of our customers and a lot of people are creating a lot of product focused content. And we talked a lot about in the webinar about, like, where to gate your content in the beginning or the end depending on the length. But if you think think about it as, like, a way for people to gain more access to more, like, in-depth or meatier content, you can put a lead form on your video using Wistia, and actually gate that content. So you're generating a lead and they are getting more content from you, like, after they they fill out that form. Yeah. And I think, like, even even if you're not maybe hesitant to put on something like a lead capture form, I think one of the things we've seen also work is CTAs on the video that then go to a downloadable resource. So, like, if you're wanting people to download a report and you have a short snippet about it, that's another area where you can turn a video into, like, a lead generating machine. Yeah. And I know that having a video on your landing page that also has a form drives up the conversion a lot. I think that's within the report too. So think about what context can you give to someone before they fill out a form that would help them maybe fill that form out more often or, make it more compelling to actually give you their information. So think about it where video can live, where you are also doing lead gen. Mhmm. I'm gonna take this question immediately. Is this shirt from J Crew? Yeah. It is from J Crew. Thank you for asking. Alright. That was it. That was a quick question. Alright. Can it be used for translation on live team meetings? I'm guessing this is a question about dubbing. So I don't believe it can be used during live meetings, but it would be able to be used on the recordings of those meetings afterwards. And I think captions. Does captions work? Captions works. Yeah. Captions works, but dubbing is not able to do live. Right. Yeah. Okay. Justin's got a question. Wistia, where have you been my whole life? Well, for the past 25 minutes, thanks for this. Why are companies shy to delve into video content spending and hiring talent like myself? Although the data and ROI is not only there, but it has been true for decades. That's a great question. Overcoming Video Production Hesitations That's a great question. I think I mean, yes. Companies are a little bit shy. I think one is people are investing a lot more in video. Like, we've seen in house video teams are going up. Last year, it was about sixty percent of videos, or people said that they used, in house team to make their videos. This year, it's up to, like, seventy percent. We're seeing more video producers working. I think a lot of companies that are shy to making videos are just, one, a little bit maybe hesitant of getting on camera themselves. And I think the other part of it is they just don't know where in their marketing to invest the time of, like, should I put a lot into a product video? Should I build an educational series? And I feel like sometimes there's a little bit of analysis paralysis that can happen with people for, like, where to start with video. Yeah. And I think there's, like, still that fear and that, like, pressure of going all in on video and making it a big production and spending a lot of money and a lot of time. And I think, starting small is actually where a lot of companies need to focus first. You know, making a a video with your iPhone or with your smartphone, using your laptop to make video, just like doing the the little low risk, moments where you can use video instead of writing a doc. Even, like, internally starting to use video more to communicate information. I think people just have that fear of the of the investment being really big and Yeah. And today, it's not like that anymore. It's just nowhere near as expensive as it used to be. Yeah. Oh, let's see. Alright. Moe, what was the hardest part of creating this awesome webinar? Oh, let's see. Challenges in Content Creation Should we get Chris to ask to answer this one? What was the hardest part? Yeah. Let's let's bring Chris in. Let's bring Chris in. Yeah. Let's bring Chris in to answer this. It's a team day in the webinar. Good job, guys. This is great. I would say the hardest part in my from my perspective, because we already have a video production muscle at Wistia. We have a camera. We have lights. We have a place to shoot. The honest truth is the production of this is not the hard part. It's the content and coming up with the content and the scripting part of it. I don't know if that was hard for you guys, but Yes. For yeah. I think, like, figuring out what you wanna say, the order in which you wanna say it, is the hardest part. And once you have that script, then everything else kinda falls into place, and you're just making a longer video. But, yeah, for us, we have the video production muscle in house, but the content is it it's it's hardest to go from zero to one on the content because there's so much content in the report. You should go download the report right now if you haven't. But there's so much content to distill. It's like, how do you how do you distill that down? And then what are the words you use to, actually describe it? So, but yeah. I yeah. I'd tell you, like, for me, since I don't do any of the production, it would probably be within the scripting side of it. And, like, I think a really hard barter, stressful thing in my world is just making sure data is easy to digest. And I think we spend a lot of time working on making sure that, like, the data in one sentence or less is something that is actionable and people could get some sort of insight from. So that takes me the most time. Yeah. I think also we found that this format works really well for us last year. And so Sam and I, you know, did the show last year. We came in and, actually, the production was a lot easier because we looked at that format and we said, okay. We can do that again. Understanding Brand Identity But, yeah, I definitely think there's so much in that report that making it concise and also entertaining is definitely the hardest part. Let's see what happens. Alright. Miguel, how is it possible to successfully own and organize the video production in a large market in a large marketing team, I'm guessing? As a video creative in a large b to b company, it's just so overwhelming to deal with so many content created and maintain brand consistency. That's a really great question. I I think you have to know, who your what your brand is and who you stand for and who you're speaking to. And if you know how your audience likes to consume content or likes to interact with your brand, that's, like, where you need to start, and then you need to have a foundation of how your brand visually is represented. Both of those things give you a way of, like, building on and testing and learning and maybe even experimenting with different kinds of content. But without knowing who you're talking to and what your brand stands for and what you're trying to communicate, it it can be really hard to, like, have consistency and and have a lot of people different people making a lot of different creative. So yeah. I feel like for me, a lot of it too is, like, knowing just where we can be flexible with the brand and where we really don't. Like, our voice, our tone, our style, like, a lot of that is something that's pretty, like, locked in, and we don't wanna deviate. But maybe, like, the container that it's in is something we know is very flexible. Like, okay. We're gonna show the product off at a game show, but the game show will have very similar vibes to Wistia's content. It'll follow similar principles there. So I think, like, knowing really having those clear things of, like, Taylor outlined of, like, what's the solid stuff we need to do and sure there's brand consistency and where can we flex. And I think Wistia does a good job of using, like, containers as a way to be like Yeah. This container will fit this type of content. Empowering Creative Ownership Yeah. And I also think, like, giving more people ownership of the brand makes it a lot easier. I've been at companies where, like, one person owns everything and they need to gate check everything. But when you actually have, like, multiple creatives, you can enable them to be owners of the brand and not police it, but really, like, represent it well with with whatever they're creating. So trying to think of how you can enable those people with, like, the same materials, the same information, the same, like, foundation is also really important. Cool. Let's see. Alright. Christina, have you had success with actual video production leveraging AI gen technology? And if so, any tips on promoting, on prompting to generate a more successful video prompt versus only using AI for scripting and captioning? I'm gonna I just dropped a, link in the chat for one thing. For one, it's just like a blog post out loading outlining, what we did for our most recent brand campaign ad that was all entirely done with AI. And so I think that walks through some of the different pieces you could see. We use a lot of different AI tools. I feel like this would probably be another press question. I I would send them to the AMA. Perfect. It's not I don't have enough time to talk about them. That's great. We also have a great video on on all the AI tools we use Yeah. That we can also share. Alright. We've got a ton of questions. This is fantastic. Alright. Jake, are there plans to extend the feature set for the create social clips tool? I like using it, but would Choosing Between Platforms: YouTube vs Wistia enjoy more customization options. So I know we've been doing a lot of feature development on social clips especially to support, repurposing your webinar content. I know now you can, like, customize your captions and how they'll show up and even the viewer can customize them. So I definitely think there's more coming. Maybe one of our product folks can hop in the chat and and share some of that, but, we're always trying to evolve and that's definitely a a feature we've heard a lot of great feedback about too. Jake, if you have any thoughts on what you wanna customize, feel free to throw that in the chat too. That would be awesome. Okay. Joel, when should we use YouTube versus Wistia? I love this question. We get it a lot. So I think Wistia and YouTube are compliments to each other. Mhmm. And I think you have to think about what type of content you have and what what your the goal of the content is. So, like, we were talking about SEO and, enriched or SEO focused content, that can actually do really, really well on YouTube because YouTube is basically a search engine for video. But if you're thinking about content that's more tied to your product or your services, maybe it's trying to encourage someone to sign up or reach out to you. That content is probably better to live on your site Mhmm. Within a contact us page or with a form next to it to drive, like, lead gen or even sales opportunities. So I think it's just thinking about the goals of the content. YouTube is also, like, has YouTube shorts now, which is very top of the funnel, very much an awareness play. But, yeah, that's that's how I think about listing YouTube. Yeah. And I think, like, a lot of it is just if you're gonna be putting things on your website and you wanna control the colors of it, if you want to be able to, like, dub it in different languages, if you wanna add, like, lead forms and things like that, definitely just I think the brand perception of just something on your website and being able to adjust it is a key area where you'd wanna use Wistia. I think for other things that you might wanna consider, like, of how YouTube and Wistia can complement each other, you might have, like, a long I know a lot of people will use things for, like, courses where they might have a gated course or a pay walled course or something like that. You might wanna put part of that content on YouTube for discovery and send people to your website to get, like, the full course or all of the information so that those two are working towards each other, and you're moving somebody from, like, a more awareness video down to your website where they could convert or possibly consume more long form video content. Yeah. And, I mean, it can also work for your product too. Like, a lot of people search YouTube for, like, how do I do this with Wistia? Or how do I do that? So making sure that the content that you put on there is really created for YouTube. There's a lot of guidelines and a lot of, like, best practices that, you can definitely find online. But, just thinking about where people are searching for more information and making sure your content is showing up. But, yeah, definitely the customization piece is great for your site. Yeah. Alright. Do you wanna do the next one with Caleb? Evaluating Webinar Production Styles Sure. So this one is, do you have any stats or insights on the effectiveness of highly produced webinars versus traditional lower budget, which is more successful? I eat the webinar style versus yield boring web web presentation. Great question. Love this question. I don't have any, like, hard stats on what production level performs better. I think for me, the things that I often look at after our webinars to see how they're performing is, like, did the people show up? So, like, what is the registration to attendance rate? Like, how many people showed up? Is that good? And are they engaged when they got there? So, like, a lot of what I'll look at is, like, how many people stayed watching during the show? What is the focused attendee rate? And I think whether it's a small webinar with, like, ten people and you're just walking through a demo of the product or something more highly produced. Like, it's about whether it's accomplishing the goal it set out to do. And so I think, like, there's not one style or one type of webinar that I would say is necessarily better. Because, like, a small simple group demo that's interactive, the chat is engaged, like, that's a really good piece of content just as much as something that's going out to, like, hundreds or thousands of people. The only thing I'll say about, like, the more highly produced webinars that we've noticed is that, like, this one is 20 minutes or so of prerecorded content. We've also done webinars where it's, like, live then prerecorded segment, and then it goes back to, like, live again. I think having those higher produced segments makes the webinar more interesting. It makes it more engaging. And then it also means that you have a piece of content that you can use to promote the webinar itself that's really nice and highly produced, and you have good clips afterwards that you could use. And so, like, I definitely think it's a the kinda ideal strategy we'll be moving forward with is always gonna be a blend of, like, some prerecorded elements and some more traditional live elements. Yeah. And it takes the pressure off of the host, to be honest, that we don't have to be on, like, for the full webinar. We also don't have to be, like, delivering so much information or with these prerecorded segments or the prerecorded entire version really can deliver a lot in a short period of time, which you guys just saw. Yeah. Let's see. Alright. Hello from Storyblocks team. We've been testing a few different formats and LOE for webinar cut downs for our webinars. And any insights into LOE for cut downs for what's working for you all? Level of effort. Thank you, Chris. Thank you. I was gonna say that. You down. Oh, thank you. So any insights into our level of effort for cut downs, what what's working for us? So, we definitely have, like, a variety of different, effort for all of our cut downs. So sometimes we have a pod a branded podcast called Talking Too Loud. We use the Wistia social clips for that to pull out, just, like, really quick highlights from the show. Because our editor allows you to, like, customize the clip slightly to your brand and the captions and all of that, that makes it really easy and has cut down a lot of time and allowed non video experts to make those clips. So we have, like, our writers and our producers just clipping out things for social to test. Mhmm. But then there's other cases where we actually, like, plan to actually cut down with an editor with a video team specific parts of a webinar or specific parts of a video. And so that could take a little bit more of an effort. I think the biggest thing for us is we're getting we're able to do more clips and get more content out of a piece of long form content, than we have before. Yeah. And I mean, this is only, like, tangentially related, but I think one thing I've noticed with the cut downs too is we might have something like a internal, like an interview with a customer about their experience with the product. And what I found is it's really nice to take those, like, longer, maybe 20-30 minute interviews, cut those into clips, and then share those with people internally. And I think it just makes a lot of other parts. Like, I know this isn't on the marketing side, but it's definitely one of those where, like, whenever you're looking at a long form piece of content that you wanna share with somebody, whether it's external or internal, having a nice clip with captions that looks good is gonna make people more likely to, like, consume and engage with it. So definitely, like, there's different levels of effort based on what kind of thing it is. Insights on Video Editing and Cut Downs Yeah. That makes sense. Alright. Jay, your videos on LinkedIn are beautiful. Thank you, Jay. How are you creating the AI b roll clips and the AI avatars? Are we using AI avatars? No. No. I don't think any of our videos are using AI avatars right now. Chris, do you use b roll AI for b roll at all? Occasionally. Occasionally. But very rarely unless it's a joke. We use it occasionally unless it's a joke. Chris, are there any tools that you would recommend for b roll content? Midjourney into Runway or Cling. K. I don't know if they can hear me. Midjourney or into Runway or Cling. And drive them to the AMA again. Yes. And we can drop that that I'll drop that link again. Recording from the AMA again. Alright. Let me just drop that recording. Clara, should we put webinar recordings on YouTube or just clips? It really it depends on the content again. Like, what's the goal of the webinar content? If it's a long form piece of content that's, like, going through a product offering or a very, like, specific thought leadership topic, it probably is worth being on, YouTube if you want people to find it on there. If you wanna post, like, a portion of the webinar, maybe, like, the first fifteen minutes and then drive people to the full, like, recording on your site. That's also a strategy. We don't actually put our webinar recordings on YouTube. We don't put all of our webinar recordings on YouTube. And I think the other thing I would edit slightly for YouTube, definitely cutting out maybe some of the fluff in the beginning of a webinar that typically occurs or maybe cutting out some of the q and a. Just because you want for YouTube, you just wanna be very cognizant of, like, that you have a good percentage watch, that you have, like, it's people are watching and engaging with it. People are dropping off, like, are not dropping off. And then I think, like, there's a lot of things you should consider doing when moving a webinar to YouTube, just making sure you have chapters that it's easy to navigate that video. Because YouTube is really gonna reward watch time. And webinars are really great for YouTube because they have their long form and you can drive up that watch time, but you don't want it to come at the cost of people, like, seeing it, not a mean being able to find what they're looking for and then just bouncing. Yeah. And you probably want to drive someone somewhere else after they watch a webinar recording on your site. So I I think, like, it's probably best to have most of the recording on your site so that you can either drive them to another place to download something or to get a demo or to sign up for your product, whether wherever it may be or another webinar. Like, you wanna send them to the another thing to watch. So, yeah, you gotta weigh the pros and cons of it. But Let's see. What else do we have here? How do we have okay. We got so many more questions. Okay. Monica, how deep in development pipeline is the ability to add audio after a video is recorded? Future of Audio Integration in Video We can add music now. So you can add music now. But we don't we don't we haven't really stated anything publicly on our Yeah. So you can add music to a video that's uploaded into Wistia now. We have some background music that you can actually use within the library, but we haven't been building too much in terms of adding audio post, post, like, production after you've already made the video. You can record a voice over to, slides or a presentation within our record feature, or within our group record feature with other if you wanna do multiple people. But right now, we don't have the ability to add audio after you've created a video. Alright. The very futuristic one. Which one? The data and content? Oh, there you go. Listen. Can you do a prerecorded webinar that can answer questions via AI? Then AI could set up an appointment. We will send that over to product. It has an idea. You cannot do that today. No. You cannot do that today. That's a very I like that idea, though. Okay. Lindsey's got another question observing the chat going on here. Any plans to allow reply to a comment and or tag other attendees? I'm pretty sure you can reply to a comment now as an attendee. But tagging other attendees, we haven't I don't think we have that, but I think that's a great idea. It's on the road map. I'm getting whispers in my ear. It's on the road map. But you can definitely reply to someone within the chat. Video Content Strategies for Websites Okay. Let's see. Clara, for b two b professional service company with multiple solution solution offerings, what type of videos would be best to add to our website? Example is, videos on each service page with an employee explaining it via versus text animation video with a voice over explaining. Oh, yeah. So this is some of the data that I thought was, like, really interesting this year in the state of video report was about video play rates and engagement rates by location on your website. So it's kind of a unique set of data where we can see, like, if you put a video on a product page, how often do people engage with that video or click on it, and then how much of it do they watch? So I think, like, the kind of obvious areas that you would wanna think about and, like, the way we do at Wistia is there's usually a video on each product page at the top. So it's like, if we're talking about webinars, there's a video about the webinar product. If we're talking about hosting, there's a video about the hosting product. There's also video on the home page. I think some areas that we've seen from the data that were really interesting is there was a lot of play we had a high play rate and a high engagement rate for videos on a contact page and also for videos on thank you pages. So I think if you have a more top of funnel offer and then you wanted to talk about the product in more detail on a thank you page, Or if you wanna really, like, somebody is looking to contact you and you wanna put a video right there, that's an area that I think is underused currently. So, like, there's definitely a lot of areas on the website where you could start scattering videos throughout. Yeah. Product page, homepage, and, contact page would probably be the highest priority ones. Yeah. And I would also think about, like, A/B Testing those two ideas of, like, having a person on the screen versus having text and maybe an animated video, and seeing which performs better. I think we've seen a lot of success with having people in our videos Mhmm. Just much more engaging, like, much more emotionally connecting to the audience. But that's also worth a test and maybe doing that on, like, a low risk page, like, I don't know, like your blog subscription page or, like, a survey page that we've we've done that before. So just think about places where you can do those kind of tests of the types of video you wanna make, that that's a little bit more low risk than your home page. Yeah. Video Hosting and CDN Capabilities Okay. Eric, can you host videos and then provide a direct URL? What is the max resolution you handle? Are you a CDN, or what CDNs do you work with? So you can definitely host a video on Wistia and send a direct URL to anyone to that video. We have, like, a nice media page that you can customize. The max resolution we handle, Chris, do you know what - We're 4K. 4K. Our we are not a CDN. But, yeah, we work with S3 We work with S3 and And possibly others. We'll have to And possibly others. Chris is gonna look into that and get us more info, but, yeah, we are not a CDN. Alright. I've got a couple more questions that are coming through. Let's see. What functions what does that say? What functions do you provide, if any, for live streaming? So this is Wistia that you're on right now. This is our webinar platform. This is where you can live stream to an audience or you can even simulcast to social, which we are also doing right now on LinkedIn. But this is our live streaming capabilities. We have, a lot of great features that you can see and play around with right as you're in this webinar. But we'll also throw a link, later at the end just to get more information from our team if you're interested. What else is there? There's a bunch more. Effective Video Content for Contact Pages Charles has a good question. What type of video would you put on a contact page? So that's really where you wanna, like, show exactly what the person is gonna get when they talk to someone at your company. So explaining, like, who you are, what you do, and what you expect to, like, help them with. I think it's like a really clear way to get someone to to sign up or contact you directly. If if you you should assume that they've probably seen at least one other page on your site, probably your home page. So just getting to the point of, like, what you're going to provide them and how you're gonna be interacting with them is a great piece of content to put on the contact page. Yeah. And I think if there's other things you can like, walking them through maybe a little bit of what your ideal type of of customer is or who you generally work with. Something that maybe the sales rep might do in a qualifying call or something like that just to give them, like, we traditionally work with small businesses in this area or just kind of giving that information so they know, like, they can watch the video and go, great. I'm a perfect fit for this. I would love to, like, talk or, like, oh, this doesn't seem quite as, quite as aligned for me. Alright. We've got a few more questions, but I think we're gonna pause here. We'll be able to go and answer the questions after, the webinar ends. But we just wanna say thank you all for coming. Thank you so much. Yeah. Thank you for your great questions. Thanks for engaging in the chat. Thanks to everyone at Wistia for helping us put this show together. Thanks to our friends at Superside and Dropbox and Clear Academy and And three Play Media. And three Play Media for helping us with data and putting the report together. Yeah. And go check out the report today. We'll we'll drop a link in in the chat. But thanks everyone for coming. Thanks, Sam.