Vidyard, a popular video messaging company, has recently announced its entry into the virtual digital avatar market and secured new funding of $15M from Export Development Canada (EDC), BMO Capital Partners, and existing investors Battery Ventures, Bessemer Venture Partners, and iNovia Capital. This brings the company’s total funding to $90.7M.
According to Gartner Research, AI avatars using generative AI technology will support 70% of digital and marketing communications by 2025, up from less than 5% in 2022. The AI avatar market is valued at USD 14.34B in 2022 and is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 47.1% from 2023 to 2030. The growth is driven by increased demand for remote collaboration tools, customer preferences for video content in corporate communications, hybrid work environments, and advancements in video streaming technology.
Jonathan Lister, Chief Operating Officer at Vidyard says “the increasing demand for authentic and personalized characters for online interactions by companies from various industries is opening up a future where AI-powered video communications can become the cornerstone of productive connections between sellers and buyers.”
Vidyard’s advantage over leading AI video and avatar providers, such as Synthesia, HeyGen, and Tavus, is that its products are embedded in a sales workflow, making it easy to create personalized videos and send them to buyers all within the sales ecosystem. Market leaders like Microsoft, Marketo, and Hubspot are already using Vidyard.
Hubspot’s VP of Platform Ecosystem, Scott Brinker, who has been testing Vidyard’s AI Avatar platform, says that “Virtual avatars will address a lot of critical pain points for HubSpot users, including the stage fright associated with traditional video recording, the massive amount of time it takes to get them ‘right,’ the difficulty of finding the right place and time to do it, and the fact that it’s rarely their top priority.”
In a recent customer survey by GTM Partners, Vidyard found that when video was added, sales funnel performance increased by 85%, four to five times more meetings were booked. In addition, two to four times more sales-qualified opportunities were generated. This resulted in a 25% increase in close rates.
According to Gartner, AI’s capability to help sellers engage more effectively with prospects and customers and to do so at scale by automating labor-intensive tasks is one of the most valuable contributions to using AI in sales. As communications continue to shift in customer preferences, virtual avatars are making it extremely easy for sales and marketers to get messages out highly personalized and improve customer and buyer interactions.
Kelvin Beachum, a National Football Athlete of the Arizona Cardinals, has found Vidyard’s virtual avatar technology useful. He says “AI technology is just beginning to crack the surface of its capabilities. For me, time is money. As an organization, we are always trying to be efficient with our time to accomplish as much as possible at a high level. Using AI for efficiency allows for a high-velocity workflow of my daily operations, and I am excited to continue implementing it.”
Lister says “B2B buying and selling is fundamentally broken. Buyers want timely and relevant information and automation that helps simplify their complex buying journey. While the sellers struggle to build meaningful relationships, communicate with an ever-increasing number of stakeholders, and deliver high-quality insights given the limitations of current sales technology.”
As this market continues to unfold, there is a need to keep a vigilant eye on deep fakes and the increasing risks of video communication. Stanford has released guidelines on digital communication ethics to help mitigate deep fake risks.