As expected, it has some positive statistics on the expanding influence of video marketing. It’s not really surprising, coming from a platform that exists to help its customers (i.e. marketing agencies) send out content, including video content for marketers.

You can read the article in full here. In the meantime, here are the highlights.

• 91% of survey respondents say they use video marketing—the highest survey figure on record.
• The number of digital video viewers worldwide is expected to reach 3.5 billion this year (and the current global population is over 8 billion).
• The average viewer watches 17 hours of online videos a week.
• 83% of marketers suggest videos should be under 60 seconds in length.

The HubSpot article identifies five changing online video consumption trends, apparently backed by the survey research (more on that later).

Let’s quickly look at these five identified trends.

1. Consumers increasingly rely on video marketing—66% of consumers claim to watch video content to learn about a brand or product.
2. People watch for escapism—the survey indicates close to 60% of people watch online video to “relax and unwind” or “laugh and be entertained”.
3. Consumers lean into their passions—13% of consumers watch videos to “explore an interest or passion” while 11% “want to learn something new”.
4. Video production quality is becoming more important—28% feel it’s “essential”, while 36% feel it’s “somewhat important”.
5. Consumers prefer shorter videos—52% of consumers prefer videos under three minutes, with 16% saying less than one minute is ideal. But 48% said they prefer videos from four minutes to over 12 minutes.

Look, the quality of any kind of research or survey can be arbitrary depending on a range of factors (e.g. spread of respondents, impartiality of questions etc.).

Having said that, we agree that video marketing is a growing part of the marketing mix and there is no doubt that consumers are using their screen devices to access more and more online video content. Especially now that all the major social media platforms allow video consumption.

However, a survey that says only 13% of consumers watch videos to “explore an interest or passion” seems concerning. We recognise most online videos are not commercially driven but we would suggest that far more than 13% of people will watch things that interest them, including branded content. Surely?

We will always argue that videos are a powerful medium and, when done correctly, they can have an enormous impact on your marketing efforts.

We also agree that production quality is becoming a discerning issue. A low-fi video on TikTok has its place, but our belief is that online videos will be a major contributor to brand impression and quality can never be undervalued.

But we would caution any client about accepting it as fact that consumers only like shorter videos or that they mainly watch online videos to have a laugh and be entertained. Our view is that there is room for every kind of video—short, long, funny, serious. It all depends on what is right for the job at hand.

Our advice is to concentrate on the quality of your content and how it can best engage with the audience, rather than trying to fit it into some formulated length or finding ways to give people a giggle.