More people are looking for easy tools to get into video creation and Clipchamp has grown 40% meeting their needs.
In recent articles, I have covered major announcements from companies like Canva and InVision that have seen significant growth in their user bases. Clipchamp doesn't have the U.S. brand awareness of Canva, but it does essentially the same thing for video producers that Canva and InVision do for would-be graphic designers -- gives them tools that are point-and-click intuitive enough that users can get started creating quickly without learning a lot of complicated editing, layout, or design software.
Are the results as good as hiring a professional to do your design or video editing? Most likely not, if the user really has no experience creating -- but the technology has become good enough that even non-designers like me can dress up a cover image with occasional success without having to ask a designer for a favor. In that respect, the availability of freemium options like Clipchamp is a real boon for creators who want to learn a new craft while putting out content, instead of spending 100 hours locked away in a dark room learning Adobe After Effects.
Since the advent of the pandemic, internet usage has grown overall for the average consumer -- and screen-based revenue has grown along with it for companies.
Zenith’s online video report said that the amount of time spent viewing online video grew an average of 32% a year between 2013 and 2018. This past year, viewers spent 84 minutes/day watching online videos but in 2021 it is expected to go up to an average of 100 minutes. Of course, where there are good content and a viewing audience there is money to be made -online video advertising will rise from $45 billion this year to $61 billion by 2021, growing at nearly double the rate of online advertising.
Clipchamp's growth has ridden the wave of new creators and they have gained 40% more users -- 5 million new users since March 2020 (for a total of 13 million users).
To meet its customer demand this year, Clipchamp nearly tripled in size to 80 FTEs, with new leadership coming from brands Microsoft, Amazon, Google, Facebook, Logitech, and Red Hat.
The company also opened a new U.S. location in Seattle. I caught up with Anna Ji, Director of Product at Clipchamp, at their Seattle office and asked her a few questions about how they have adapted their online tools and how they have scaled for growth during this surge in creator activity.
Anna Ji's responses:
What has Clipchamp done to turn this opportunity into a growing user base?
At the beginning of COVID-19, Clipchamp realized it was in a unique position to assist pandemic-affected businesses and launched a COVID-19 free trial offer for all new users. Clipchamp’s video editor tool enables businesses to easily create relevant video content to communicate with customers. Not only did this allow for clear communication between businesses and customers, it also provided opportunities for innovation in the digital space.
During this period, Clipchamp has seen a 69% increase in new users sign ups, including 41% of COVID-19 free trial users continuing on with a paid plan. As a result, Clipchamp saw a 120% uplift in video exports between March and October 2020, a significant increase in exports from the same period in the previous year.
Has the free product changed to accommodate changing user needs?
With work and school going remote, the ability to capture became more important than ever. To assist those now needing to communicate remotely, we decided to add the ability to capture screen recordings and webcam recordings to our free plan.
Usage of these features increased significantly; 900% increase in screen recordings and 550% in webcam recordings since March.
We now also provide intuitive editing capabilities such as freehand which allows users to freely crop and reposition video clips without limitations. This feature also allows users to showcase more than one video within one frame. This tool is particularly useful in explainer videos or recordings of live events. Most recently we have released a new version of our editing timeline. The new and improved timeline is more intuitive and user friendly, allowing everyday editors an ever easier editing experience with Clipchamp.
We're constantly updating our media importing and exporting options (with integrations) to meet the changing needs of everyday editors. In November alone, we've added Box and Zoom to our list of integrations.
Our Box integration allows users to securely import media from their Box account directly into Clipchamp, edit a video and export the finished project back to Box.
Our Zoom integration makes editing Zoom recordings simpler... Users are now able to import a Zoom recording into Clipchamp, edit it to improve its watchability, and export to share.
Beyond integrations, we've also enabled a new importing system that lets editors "drop" media files from their phone into Clipchamp using a simple six-digit code.
Where is Clipchamp seeing the clearest growth in content creation?
We have seen a significant increase in video exports overall but most significantly, an increase in the number of exports a single user is exporting per month. Single user exports of 11-20 videos per month has increased 152% and for SME and corporate users, this has increased 108% since March.
We have also seen a 119% increase in overall template usage since March, along with a 93% increase in TikTok specific aspect ratio video exports and a huge 8000% increase in TikTok template usage since March.
How much of the overall user growth has been specific to TikTok users?
We have seen a huge 1000% increase in TikTok template usage and 93% increase in TikTok specific aspect ratio video exports since March.
Is TikTok a major focus for Clipchamp?
Our focus is to ensure we provide our users with capabilities that matter to them, and this can change over time. Right now, TikTok is doing exceptionally well with small and medium-sized businesses, so we definitely want to cater to those needs.
Is the ability to create and express an important way of adjusting during quarantine/lockdown?
The ability to communicate is fundamental and video is arguably the most effective way to communicate. We’ve definitely seen the scope of videos widen, instead of just creating high-budget, high-effort videos, our customers are using it for everyday purposes.
Have you seen user trends that were unexpected/seemed particularly creative?
Teams doing their quarterly wraps using video montage is particularly creative and heartwarming. Based on this, we have launched templates for our users to create ‘End of 2020’ wrap up videos for internal and external communications.
What do you see as the video content trajectory for creators 2021?
We’ll see increased adoption of video creation for marketing and social media, but also for everyday communication within organizations including training, how-to, and demo videos, staff, and client onboarding videos, and video presentations. Non-marketing teams will accelerate their adoption of videos as a replacement for other forms of asynchronous communication.
Why did Clipchamp reincorporate in the US?
Clipchamp has a significant customer base in the US, used by millions of businesses, from SME to Fortune 500 companies, so having a team on the ground is critical to understanding these customer’s needs, ensuring we keep our finger on the pulse of the latest video trends and therefore how we can grow within this market.
With an office in Seattle and San Francisco, Clipchamp is working hand-in-hand with partners such as Google, Dropbox, and Box to enable creators from all around the world to connect with their favorite applications and file cloud storages where they store their favorite memories.
Clipchamp will announce more partnerships soon to continuously ease our creators' workflow.
Google reported a strong third quarter for YouTube, which saw ad growth of $5.04 billion and has 32 million channels with over 2 billion users. TikTok has slapped its way to over 500 million users and dodged the government's attempts to shut it down in the U.S.
It's safe to say that consumption of video will continue to grow. Add to that the fact that approximately 40 million in the U.S. are newly unemployed and the fact that the pandemic keeps us all home, and it's easy to see how this trend of more incentives for more creators will continue.
It will be interesting to see what tools will become available to further democratize the ability to create content. In 1999, I was helping to move multiple road boxes at 50 lbs.+ each to shoot with a Beta rig for the day -- now people shoot short films with their iPhones and edit them in their bedrooms.
In my opinion, it will be fascinating to see what can be done with little-to-no experience or equipment in the next couple of years which are sure to be a hotbed of web-based creation.