Video marketing statistics, sourced and dated

The video marketing statistics worth quoting are the measured ones. Wistia’s 2026 State of Video data, drawn from more than 13 million hosted videos, puts the average engagement rate for videos under a minute at 52%. Vidyard’s 2024 benchmark of 943,305 business videos finds 65% of viewers finish videos under a minute, against 20% for videos over 20 minutes.

Two kinds of statistic

Most round ups mix two very different kinds of figure.

Measured platform data counts what viewers did. Wistia and Vidyard host videos for businesses and can see every play, so their benchmarks describe real viewing across very large samples. They have their own bias, since they only see videos their customers host, mostly business to business marketing, but the numbers are counts.

Survey data records what marketers say. Wistia’s report surveys more than 900 professionals, and other vendors run similar yearly surveys. These are useful for plans and budgets, and should be read as opinions of the vendor’s audience.

The table under this article labels every figure as one or the other.

What length does to viewing

Both measured datasets agree on direction. Wistia states it plainly: the shorter the video, the higher the engagement rate. Videos under a minute average 52%, product videos in that range 50% and customer testimonial videos 46%. Engagement drops by a further 11% once a video passes 30 minutes.

Vidyard measures completion rather than average viewing. In its 2024 data, 65% of viewers stayed to the end of videos under a minute and 20% to the end of videos over 20 minutes. Its public page shows the middle lengths only in charts, so those values are not quoted here.

Length is not the whole story. Wistia notes that a ten minute video with a lower engagement rate can still deliver more total watch time than a one minute video, and that educational videos, courses and webinars hold attention better at length than other formats. Webinar replays of 31 to 45 minutes earned more than twice the on demand engagement of replays under 30 minutes in its data.

What changed in the formats

Wistia’s upload data shows where video is going: vertical HD uploads at 1080 by 1920 rose 24% year on year and 4K uploads 16%, while 720p fell 8% and square fell 4%. That matches the platforms. Meta’s Reels ad specification is 9:16, and YouTube classes square or vertical videos of up to three minutes as Shorts. The short form video statistics post sets the platforms side by side.

What the surveys say

From Wistia’s survey of more than 900 professionals: 81% of teams share videos on LinkedIn and 76% on YouTube; 90% are taking steps to make videos accessible; more than a third already use AI in their video workflow; and planned customer testimonial production has risen from 17% in 2023 to 47% in 2026. Almost 40% spent under 5,000 US dollars on production in 2025. These describe the respondents, who are Wistia’s audience, not all businesses.

What could not be verified

Several widely repeated figures, such as the share of businesses that use video and the share of marketers who say video increased sales, come from an annual industry survey whose page refused automated reading on 21 October 2026. They are left out rather than quoted second hand.

How the videos on this site compare

The 20 finished video examples on this site run from 18 to 52 seconds. The 13 vertical ones, promos and creator style UGC ads, sit between 18 and 31 seconds; the 7 landscape ones, including five tutorials, run 27 to 52 seconds. Every one is under a minute, which is where both measured datasets find the highest completion. The SaaS feature launch video and the fitness app UGC video are typical of each format.

Using these figures

1. Quote measured figures for results and survey figures for plans, and say which is which.
2. Give the dataset and year with every number.
3. Match length to the job: under a minute for ads and promos, longer for teaching.
4. Track your own completion and watch time; the video marketing metrics post covers which to watch, and how long a promo video should be covers length by channel.

The video completion rate and average watch time pages define the two measures.

Reading a statistic before you quote it

Before a figure goes into a pitch or a plan, ask four questions of it. Who collected it: a platform counting views, or a survey of its own customers? How many videos or people does it cover, and in what year? What exactly does it count: engagement as the average share watched, completion as reaching the end, or views as a play started? And does the page you are reading state the number in text, or is it a figure repeated from somewhere else?

The measured figures in this post pass all four. Wistia states its dataset as more than 13 million videos for its 2026 report, Vidyard states 943,305 videos from January to December 2024, and both define what they count. Many widely shared numbers do not pass: they cite a vendor’s survey without its sample, or a figure that has been repeated so often its original page no longer exists.

A useful rule is to quote measured data for what viewers do, survey data for what marketers plan, and never one as if it were the other. If you need a number for your own channel, your hosting platform’s analytics for your own videos beats any industry average.

In the product

The video generator makes promotional, tutorial and UGC videos in landscape 1920 by 1080 or vertical 1080 by 1920, at 30 frames a second. Length is short, standard or long, aiming at about 10, 18 or 30 seconds, and UGC videos stay under 30 seconds. Captions are drawn into the frames and on by default. The AI promo video maker page shows the generator, and the guide to making a promo video with an AI voiceover walks through it.