Statistics
The Effectiveness of Animation
Animated videos are one of the most effective tools for introducing people to a brand’s products or services. They are incredibly effective at attracting attention, persuading people to take action and making brands memorable.
To grow your business, you need to take qualified leads through a series of mental states: from awareness to interest, interest to sense-making, and then on to consideration, intent, resolve, loyalty and advocacy. Animation can be used at every touchpoint in the process, but it's especially effective at taking people from interest to sense-making; and then on to consideration and intent.
Below are statistical data from our own analysis, as well as surveys conducted by Wyzowl, that illustrate the effectiveness of animation.
Retention
Audience retention is the percentage of viewers who watch and leave the animation at every moment of the video. This is one of the key indicators of the success of an animation. The rationale is simple: the more retention you get, the more likely you will persuade someone to take action.
In the graph below, we did an analysis of four different animation/video formats:
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A traditional Explainer Animation
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Our unique Persuader Animation format
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A video that combines Animation and Video
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And lastly, a Video blog.
Notably, we did the analysis on videos with durations that are significantly longer than the recommended length. Any animation over 2.5 minutes becomes considerably more challenging in terms of retention. We wanted to see how long we could retain attention, especially with our Persuader Animation.
LOCK 'EM DOWN
We are often asked: "how long should an animation be?" Our answer is always: "as long as you need, to be persuasive, while retaining people's attention". Retaining attention (to a significant degree) for longer creates more opportunities to make a convincing case.
WHAT THE GRAPH ABOVE TELLS US
Our analysis of the four videos we analysed indicates the following:
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The Persuader Animation format (yellow) is significantly more effective at retaining attention. 58% of people watched most of the animation beyond the 2-minute mark, and 43% of people watched it to the end. We were very pleased with that result.
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The Traditional Explainer Animation retained attention at roughly 37% over four-minutes, with just 22% of people watching it to the end.
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The video that combined animation with live video had roughly the same outcome as the Explainer animation. However, 25% watched it to the end.
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And the video where I talk about WAKSTER's Approach to Animation performed embarrassingly badly. I will have to up my game on that one.
This is by no means a detailed scientific study. To draw more definite conclusions, we’d need a far larger sample rate. We're working on a more robust, science-based study, on the effectiveness of the many contributing factors which make our animations highly persuasive. It’s a reasonably complex study – and as soon as we have the results, we’ll update this page.
And now for some survey stats from Wyzowl:
66% of people want to watch a video about your products and services
84% of people say that they’ve been convinced to buy a product or service by watching a brand’s videos
87%
of video marketers say video has increased traffic to their website.
95%
of video marketers say video has helped increase user understanding of their product or service.
80%
of video marketers say video has directly helped increase sales.
89%
of video marketers say video, in general, gives them a good return on their investment.
81%
of video marketers say video has helped increase the average time their visitors spend on-page.
There is no doubt that animation works.
Let us help you generate more leads and conversions by creating a persuasive introduction to your products and services.