The State of Enterprise Video 2022
If there's one thing that's certain during these uncertain times, it's that the enterprise video space continues to see one of the most significant growth curves of all of the streaming categories we cover here at Streaming Media magazine. Research conducted by the Streaming Media team, in conjunction with the team at the Help Me Stream Research Foundation as part of the biannual State of Streaming surveys, shows that enterprise video growth outperforms online sports content, outshines the glamour of online entertainment, outpaces educational use, and is only second to the almost supernatural growth of the houses of worship market.
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It hasn't always been that way. In fact, for the 2020 Sourcebook article, "The State of Enterprise Video," written in late 2019, I noted that "enterprise video was often overlooked by an industry focused on changing the way entertainment video is consumed by a global audience."
In some ways, this oversight was understandable, as most online video platforms (OVPs) were relegated to following the last of the online media entertainment platforms to the cloud. It wasn't that enterprise video wasn't lucrative, but it wasn't lucrative enough to attract scores of OVPs chasing the growth of OTT entertainment platforms. After all, most corporate video in late 2019/early 2020 was used for internal communications, regulatory compliance, or training purposes, and most of these videos never made it beyond the confines of the corporate firewall.
In business, it's often said that confirming growth requires measurements, statistics, and a consulting firm to detail what both mean. Streaming Media hosted several surveys in 2021, including "State of Enterprise Video Trends 2021" (registration required) with sponsor OpenExchange, which I'll highlight later in the article. First though, let's look at several other surveys that have been conducted across the enterprise space over the past year.
Enterprise Video Usage Is Up—Way Up
The growth in enterprise video these days is nothing short of phenomenal. To put it in perspective, 84% of the respondents to Socialive's 2021 "State of Enterprise Video: Creation, Broadcasting & Distribution" survey said that their company's video content output increased over the previous year. A quarter of respondents cited a significant increase. The survey had more than 600 enterprise respondents from departments as varied as video services, marketing, and human resources.
In addition, the survey notes that 88% of respondents expect their company's video content output to increase in 2022. And it's not just internal meetings but rather companywide demand that's driving this growth. Nearly 60% of respondents report that marketing teams are using video most often, followed by sales (39%), customer success (36%), and human resources (32%).
Why Do I Feel So Tired (of Online Meetings)?
For all of the growth statistics, though, there's the question of whether online meetings are engaging, beneficial, and—frankly, as we've all complained about "Zoom fatigue"—a healthy way to work.
"Nearly half of professionals working remotely (49%), which translates to 32 million individuals, reported a high degree of exhaustion as a direct result of numerous daily video calls," according to Virtira Consulting's "The Webcam Survey: Exhausted or Engaged?" The survey finds that Zoom fatigue is due to two major factors: increased meeting load and what seems to be the unnecessary pressure to have webcams on for all of the meetings.
Cynthia Watson, Virtira Consulting's CEO, says there's a disconnect between worker perceptions and management perception: "In my conversations with business leaders throughout the pandemic, the majority said engaging with employees on webcams has increased engagement and productivity. Unfortunately, our study indicates the opposite."
While our internal research at Streaming Media magazine shows that professionals in the streaming video space prefer to work remotely—and in mid-2021 said that they didn't anticipate going back to the office on a regular basis for more than a year (and, even then, for many fewer meetings)—Virtira Consulting's survey found that "63% of remote workers are participating in more meetings online than they would have in the office." In addition, almost a third of respondents said they spend an average of 2–3 hours on camera during daily meetings.
And yet management seems to miss the point on this, with Watson noting that "the increased time in front of webcams has been compounded by well-meaning employers attempting to raise morale by hosting online happy hours, pizza parties, and more."
While “Zoom fatigue” became even more of a challenge in 2022, many business leaders say the increase in video meetings has led to increased engagement and productivity.
David Moricca, Socialive's founder and CEO, pins part of the blame on videoconferencing tools—whether it be Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, or any number of startup videoconferencing solutions—as offering a substandard experience when trying to replicate an in-person experience. "93% of enterprises have used standard video conferencing tools for virtual events in the past year," says Moricca. "However, nearly half of respondents [to the Socialive survey] (42%) only experienced moderate engagement throughout the event."
Is there a better way? Now that we're 2 years, and counting, into the work-from-home-more-than-the-office cycle, few are placing bets anymore as to when it will end. Instead, online video companies are pivoting to meet enterprise needs. For example, Kaltura, an online video platform primarily focused on education, has seen the growth of enterprise and—at least since its initial public offering in mid-2021—an opportunity to develop into a hybrid meeting solution provider.
Moricca says that organizations have a couple of ways to deal with fatigue: lowering the number of online meetings or increasing the quality of those meetings. The Socialive survey notes that 87% of respondents say "their organizations plan to make changes to decrease the impact of virtual meeting fatigue in the next 12 months," and half of the companies "plan to decrease meeting fatigue by producing higher quality and more engaging video content to replace certain meetings."
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