• by Daisy Whitney , Op-Ed Contributor, February 16, 2017

While the rise in online video consumption of news, sports and TV shows has garnered most of the attention lately, brands and businesses are also reaping the benefits of online video quite nicely too.

A new report from Vidyard sheds light into how businesses are harnessing digital video. To measure the state of video in business, the online video platform collected data from more than 500 businesses and more than 600 million video streams to create a benchmark for usage.

On average, businesses publish 18 new videos a month, with the high tech and manufacturing industries doing the most video production. Many companies have now hired staff to create such videos, with about 85% having the resources to produce video in-house, Vidyard said.

Interestingly, while mobile viewing has risen quickly for news, sports and TV, Vidyard found that desktop viewing is still prevalent for business videos. About 86% of business-related videos are watched on desktops, with 14% seen on mobile devices. Knowing this viewing trend can guide brands to produce videos that work well on desktop browsers.

If there were any question as to whether consumers are watching such videos at work, this stat answers it: The most popular viewing time for business videos is Wednesday morning between 7 and 11 am PST.

Product demos, how-to videos and testimonials are among the most popular types, and these videos are most frequently distributed on Web sites and social media.

The average length is eight minutes, but shorter videos are coming into vogue. More than half of business-related videos produced in the last year are shorter than two minutes. Videos less than 90 seconds retained viewers for 53% of the time.

In late 2016, more than 92% of brands had said video was key to their marketing efforts — and more than two-thirds said they aimed to raise their video budgets, according to Vidyard.