If a Picture is worth 1000 words, a 30 Second Video is worth 720,000 or more!
By: Chris Milton
Tags: Marketing, Content Marketing, Video, Video Marketing, YouTube

Let’s do the simple math to justify the title of this article. We know the old saying where one thousand words are equivalently represented in one picture. But video? Thats a pretty big statement (and a pretty big number).

Looking up some basic facts about videos reveal the foundation of motion pictures. Each frame exposes a certain number of pictures or frames each second. It is such a high number, our human eye can’t follow the transition from one frame to the next. The average rate of frames per second (FPS) in a video is typically 24, 25 or 30. This means there are 24, 25, 30 pictures in each second of video. Let’s be conservative and say 24 FPS.

24 FPS x 30 Seconds x 1000 words = 720,000 words

We are all familiar with the 30 second format of video, its the usual length of commercial on TV. In the last few years, video has taking over. Video services like Youtube and Netflix have grown exponentially and taken a huge cut of traditional television viewership and is forcing major networks to rethink their formats. With that increased viewership means a huge audience. Netflix is reserved for the properly formatted television shows, documentaries and movies, but Youtube is a platform that anyone can leverage.

Obviously, video works. But is your 30 second video really the same as 720,000 typed or spoken words?

Go Beyond the Simple Math

Now, beyond the simple math. Does this actually work?

To compare, 720,000 words is equivalent to 11 average books, according to Amazon’s great text stats which says the average book is 64,000 words. With the average person reading 200–400 words per minute, or speed readers claiming to reach over 1000, the quickest you could read those 11 books would be 12 hours for a speed-reader or 40 hours for us normal folk.

Speed Reader: 720,000 words / 1000 words per minute / 60 minutes per hour = 12 hours

Average Reader: 720,000 words / 300 words per minute / 60 minutes per hour = 40 hours

Reading for an entire work week would give you the same content of a 30 second video? Doubtful.

Video offers a great user experience both for user engagement and quality of content, but cannot replace the gross word count or knowledge in all of those books. However, it is much more likely that users will watch a video over finishing a book. Publishing content is very important, but the video creates an attractive grabber for your business.

Bottom Line: Use Video

Regardless of how those numbers stack up, YouTube alone has one hour of video uploaded every second! Not all of this video is business oriented or will go viral, but content on your YouTube channel will aid in your SEO efforts and improve your page rank. This content will also improve the quality of content on your website.

Case studies show time on site is stronger with video being used. Posts on social media (Facebook, Twitter and Google+) have a higher number of shares than those that do not. Video is so attractive to Facebook users, that they integrated auto-play features even though mobile users are complaining of unwanted data overages.

The Facebook example might be a negative example, but it is the truth. All of the frames per second add up to a very large consumption of data on mobile devices. Best practice for video is to watch on wifi. 720,000 words would be the same as you scrolling through 720 pictures on Instagram… that seriously eats away at your data allowance on your smartphone.

Get Started

A great place to get started with video is this guide by Distilled. The guide covers the details of what to do and how to do it. I keep their page book marked as we are planning for the launch of our Tangle Creative YouTube channel with some awesome ideas for video content to compliment our blog.

This is very timely as video traffic will be 79 percent of all consumer Internet traffic in 2018, according to Cisco. Various studies show more than half of companies are already making use of videos. Nielsen claims 64% of marketers expect video to dominate their strategies in the near future. It’s not difficult to see why the future of content marketing is video.

To summarize, the math may not be so straight forward based on the age old saying of a picture is worth 1000 words, but video will make a serious impact to your marketing efforts. Engagement of users is highest on video, and engagement is a metric all marketers are concerned about.