Originally published: Greenbook, 9 April 2025
By Martin Filz, CEO
The world of research never stands still. In the age of hyper-personalisation, brands need a deeper understanding of consumers and to gather meaningful insights quickly, cost-effectively and at scale in a privacy-safe way.
Research needs to continue to innovate with the times, and in 2025, marketers are increasingly turning to video. Not only for video advertising, which is a huge trend, but also using video in the survey process to elevate research with a few key advantages. AI has also been essential, unlocking the ability to rapidly analyse vast amounts of video data. This capability allows qualitative research to be conducted at a quantitative scale, providing deeper insights on a much quicker schedule.
Accessibility and efficiency
Respondents can convey more information through video in a shorter time compared to typing long-form answers, with many people finding speaking easier and more natural than typing. Video no longer presents a technical challenge as it did a few years ago. Webcams are now a standard feature on laptops, with nearly every smartphone on the market also equipped with a front-facing camera. Additionally, with the increase in remote working, most people have become well-acquainted with Zoom and other video conferencing apps.
Richer data with emotional cues
Video captures facial expressions, tone of voice and body language in a way that text-based answers are very limited in conveying. This provides deeper insights into respondents’ emotions and attitudes. Respondents may be more likely to trust a “real person” they can see on video, such as a human-like or cartoon avatar, versus a faceless text or telephone survey, in turn making their responses more genuine and honest.
In our own research, we’ve found that the overall length of responses is higher among video responses compared to written responses to open-ended questions. This was consistently observed throughout gender and age group segments with the biggest increase observed among 35-44 year olds. Video surveys also delivered greater insights because respondents could be more expressive, which helped highlight individual segments’ concerns about a particular topic.
Telling a story vs describing a moment
When typing survey answers, respondents tend to focus on themselves or a specific moment. Whereas in videos, respondents are highly likely to go beyond themselves and extend their sharing to their observations of friends or family and often across a wider time window. This forms a more comprehensive story about what they think, why they think in that way, what they’ve done about it and what happened afterwards.
Successfully interviewing teens via video
TotallyAwesome, a youth-focused marketing agency, recently trialled video surveys to understand 13-16 year old’s sentiments about Australia’s new social media legislation, which restricts access to under 16s. Traditional, open-ended surveys had resulted in “gibberish” – nonsense words, irrelevant answers, vague or circular responses, random keyboard smashes and copy-pasted texts.
The research team wanted to find out if embedding an additional “video prober” and the ability for respondents to record their video/audio would result in better-quality responses. The survey was carried out across Australia, Singapore and Thailand, with teens asked about their thoughts on the social media ban, as well as how they would spend their time instead.
The video surveys, which were around 3-5 minutes long, resulted in much higher-quality answers. Respondents expanded on their answers and provided real-life examples, reasons or feelings. This provided a greater level of insight which would not ordinarily be captured in traditional survey questionnaires.
Video for validation
Importantly, video response surveys also provide consistency with overall findings from written responses. This suggests the methodology does not inhibit or make respondents deviate from their usual responses. What’s more, the ability to view a respondent is a powerful tool in presenting findings to confidently steer trusted data driven decisions.
However, video surveys are not without their challenges. Some users may not be comfortable with video, in which case audio-only might be an option. To increase accessibility, subtitling questions may help non-native speakers or those with hearing impairment.
It’s also critical to address privacy and offer respondents anonymity options, such as blurred faces or pseudonyms, as well as complying with data regulations. Consent must be clear and respondents must understand how their videos will be used and stored.
On the technical side, video surveys require higher bandwidth, storage and processing. AI is vital here to convert speech-to-text for easier searching, keyword tracking and sentiment analysis.
Video surveys are an exciting way to elevate consumer research and reveal meaningful consumer insights. They won’t replace traditional text-based surveys but they can enhance research at scale, offering an unfiltered picture of what people feel, think and want.
