Volume is no longer a strategy. More brands than ever are producing video — faster, cheaper, and at greater scale. Yet the measure of success is shifting. According to Wistia's 2025 State of Video report, which analysed over 100 million videos, engagement rates fell to a four-year low in 2024, despite the fact that more videos were created and more hours were watched than ever before.
That tension — more content, less attention — is the defining challenge for marketing teams heading into 2026. The brands that navigate it well won't be the ones producing the most video. They'll be the ones making clearer decisions about what to make, why, and how it fits together.
Here are the ten trends worth understanding — and what each one means in practice.
AI adoption in video production has moved fast. In 2023, just 18% of professionals used AI in their video workflow. By 2024, that figure had jumped to 41%, with a further 19% planning to start soon. The most common uses are captions, scripting, ideation, and post-production editing — practical applications that save time without fundamentally changing what makes a video work.
The risk is treating AI as a content shortcut rather than a production tool. As Piotr Smietana of Superside put it: "AI is a creative multiplier. It speeds things up, but you still need real creative talent at the helm."
For in-house teams, AI is genuinely useful — particularly for repurposing, transcription, and iterating on scripts. What it can't do is bring strategic clarity, authentic storytelling, or the judgement to know when a concept is actually good. Those remain human responsibilities.
There's a meaningful shift happening in content consumption. Short-form videos (under 90 seconds) now account for 52% of total video views across platforms, according to Wistia's data. This isn't just about YouTube Shorts and TikTok anymore — it's mainstream.
What's changed is audience expectation. Viewers have developed a much lower tolerance for slow intros and meandering storytelling. The compression of messaging into shorter time frames hasn't just become a preference — it's an expectation.
For brands, this means rethinking video strategy. Rather than thinking "long-form vs short-form", consider the role each plays in a sequence. A 15-second hook might direct attention to a 90-second explainer. A 3-minute deep dive might be the final piece that converts.
Video analytics used to centre on crude metrics: views, watch time, maybe completion rate. That's changing. More teams are now measuring business outcomes from video — click-through rates, conversion rates, cost per acquisition — rather than just engagement metrics.
What this means is that budget conversations are becoming clearer. If a video drives 2% of conversions from a 5% budget allocation, that's a data point. If it drives zero conversions, that's a data point too.
The shift matters because it changes which videos get funded. Projects with clear business outcomes get greenlit more easily. Projects that are "nice to have" get scrutinised.
A year ago, AI voiceovers felt like a cost-cutting measure. Today, they're becoming a legitimate strategic choice — but only in specific contexts.
For explainers, product demos, educational content, and some internal communications, AI voiceovers are increasingly acceptable. What they lack in warmth, they make up for in consistency, speed, and cost efficiency.
What they don't work for: anything where human voice is part of the emotional contract. Brand films, testimonials, leadership communication — these still need authentic voices.
The practical implication: AI voiceovers will become standard in certain categories, and audiences will adjust their expectations accordingly.
More brands are now publishing captions and audio descriptions as standard practice, not as an afterthought. This is partly driven by legal requirements, but increasingly by audience expectations and reach considerations.
Captions especially have become a core metric. Videos with captions get 85% higher completion rates on average. That's not just good for accessibility — it's good for performance.
The trend means more production teams are building captions and descriptions into budgets from the start, rather than adding them later.
Interactive elements in video — clickable hotspots, branching narratives, embedded CTAs — have been technically possible for years. But adoption has been slow because production costs were high and benefits unclear.
That's beginning to change. More platforms now support native interactive features. Some brands are experimenting with shoppable video on social platforms. A few are using interactive video for learning and development content.
It's not mainstream yet, but the infrastructure for it is becoming standard enough that experimentation is becoming worth considering for specific use cases.
Shooting and optimising for vertical formats (9:16, 1:1, etc) used to be a separate activity. Now it's increasingly the starting point. If you're shooting for social platforms, vertical is often the primary format, and 16:9 is the repurposed version.
This has implications for production: composition, text placement, and storytelling approaches all need to account for the vertical-first reality.
Live video used to be about "happening to stream something". Now more brands are planning live video as a strategic format. Product launches, webinars, Q&A sessions, and behind-the-scenes content are all being used as scheduled live experiences.
The shift is enabling brands to build real-time connection and authenticity, but it requires a different production approach than recorded video.
A single video shoot now routinely becomes 5-15 pieces of content across platforms: short-form clips, social tiles, email snippets, blog embeds, etc. Repurposing has moved from a bonus activity to a core part of video strategy.
This is changing production planning. Shoots are planned with repurposing in mind — different angles, cutaways, and soundbites are captured with multiple uses in mind.
Tools are catching up with this too. More video management platforms now have repurposing workflows built in, rather than requiring manual export and re-editing.
Video production used to require specialists — a director, a producer, a DP, an editor, a sound engineer. That's still valuable for large-scale production, but increasingly, teams need people who can span multiple disciplines.
This is driven by budget constraints, faster turnaround demands, and the rise of tools that make cross-discipline production more feasible. A video producer who can also edit, or an editor who can direct, is increasingly valuable in a modern marketing team.
What this means in practice: video skills are getting broader, not deeper, for many roles.
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