This is an excerpt from our latest white paper, The State of Online Video in 2017. To download the full white paper, click here. 

Marketing has always been results-oriented and measured by the ability of marketers to move customers down the funnel. Marketing requires data to make educated decisions, something that has been solved by many of the largest tech companies in the world. From Mixpanel, HubSpot, Marketo, Salesforce, and many more, these companies have changed the marketing world in numerous ways. It’s clear that the data from these technologies allow marketers to test their campaigns in real-time and make adjustments on the fly. But what about the recent revolution of video?

Up until now, data from video campaigns have been strictly reserved for vanity metrics. Statistics like views and impressions have had to be enough for marketers in the internet age. Unlike a landing page where a marketer can see a detailed heat map, how long a user was on the page, and if that user clicked on a CTA, video didn’t have this option of granular detail.

Video has always been an engaging way to communicate with your users in a meaningful and human way. It’s an incredibly effective channel for storytelling, and as such, it should be treated as a channel that should be measured and tested, just like any other campaign that marketers run on a daily basis. 

But in order to break down the state of online video in 2017, we’ll need to start with the background of our research, where we found the trends, and why they matter.

Research

We measured the results of video from 300+ marketing teams around the world. From those 300+ teams, we were able to get data from 1.5 million videos that have received a total of 650 million views. The sample size for this study paints a complete picture of video in 2017 and where the trends are headed in the future.

Through this data, we’ll break down how video can be used to increase:

• Reach
• Engagement
• Conversions

Reach

One of the most appealing aspects of video marketing is the ability to quickly communicate a message to a large audience. In fact, the human brain processes video 60,000 times faster than text. (Source: Liraz Margalit Ph.D., "Video vs Text: The Brain Perspective," Psychology Today blog, May 1, 2015)

While we know that video has a lasting impact on those that see them, it’s important to cover the differing channels in which users consume video content.

Device

In today’s digital world, this is an important metric for marketers trying to map out a customer's journey. Is your user watching video on mobile or desktop? It’s important to know how this metric correlates with your conversion metrics. If users are engaging on mobile, watching video on mobile, and ultimately, converting on mobile, it’s a channel that should see more investment. Having a cross-device strategy is important for marketers to have a frictionless user experience.

According to our research, mobile engagement with video is steadily growing to 37% share, while Android devices are also seeing an increase in video viewership: 

A device can certainly paint a picture for marketers trying to find their users at the right time, in the right place. But one other aspect of reach is even more important for determining when and how to deploy resources.