It’s been almost two decades since you (me, and everyone you know) were dubbed TIME Magazine’s Person of the Year for 2006.
We all won it because we were powering the second iteration of the World Wide Web, Web 2.0, through uploading our own short, ten-minute or fewer films to YouTube.
As the cost per gigabyte of storage decreased and media compression algorithms advanced, every social network allowed uploads of video content in some form. It’s even supplanted images as the dominant medium on the platform, accounting for 85 per cent of all traffic.
When it comes to advertising and marketing, 72 per cent said they would rather learn about a product or service through video, and 91 per cent of businesses use video in some form.
Here comes the slop and the copycats. The “tip-blabbing talking head” (usually sat in one’s office or car) has become a ubiquitous genre of self-promotion, especially on LinkedIn.
There is still a way to stand out; through using animation.
The state of animated video for business
According to Wyzowl, 99 per cent of surveyed video marketers say that video has helped increase user understanding of their product or service.
Sam Duncan, Lead Creative Producer at The Animation Co., said that brands and businesses gain a huge advantage showing their product or service instead of merely talking about it. It conveys complex ideas and messages in simple to understand forms.
“That’s the beauty of animation, whether it’s a three-dimensional, photo-realistic representation of your product doing what you say it does or even a 2D vector or motion graphic that’s quite basic looking but demonstrates the key aspects of your service, it’s far more striking than just putting a camera in front of yourself and talking about it,” he says.
Mindstamp says that viewers retain 95 per cent of a message when they watch it in a video, compared with just 10 per cent in text.
Video also carries ancillary SEO and branding benefits; well-crafted CTAs placed strategically within videos can boost website traffic and conversions.
Should you DIY animation?
Businesses can create simple motion graphics and 2D animations with software they might already use, such as PowerPoint, Keynote, or Canva.
“There’s some great free tools you can use to give your text or photos some life, really handy for simple online ads or calls to action,” Sam said. “Of course, this takes time away from what you usually do. But like anything in business, you get the best results by bringing in the professionals.”
Wyzowl also noted that 51 per cent of marketers used AI to create or edit video content in 2025, down from 74 per cent the previous year. This may be part of the backlash against “AI slop” or low-quality Generative AI animations and videos permeating social media.
The Studio Ghibli creative legend Hayao Miyazaki once stated, “This [AI] is an insult to life itself” in response to OpenAI’s ChatGPT 4o recent attempts at creating images in his studio’s painstakingly crafted anime style.
“AI, at least right now, won’t replace the human element in animation or any kind of video,” said Sam. “It can augment things, it can help things along, but using robotic AI voices and plastic-looking figures with six fingers just turns people off more often than not. It comes back to the holy trinity of business, you can get something that’s cheap and fast, but you won’t get something that’s good.”
“That’s the great thing about animation,” Sam added. “It will always keep up with your business as you innovate or pivot and show off new things or angles to your offering you may not have even thought of before.”
