Photographer: Chris Ratcliffe/Bloomberg

Recently, a spate of studies about social video populated my inbox, mainly from companies that offer tools for the art of catching attention with moving pixels. Not surprisingly for many reasons, the theme was social video marketing is vital for businesses today.

“Businesses need to learn to ‘speak video’ fluently if they want to connect with their customers on social media, » says Brad Jefferson, CEO of Animoto, in a press release behind the online video creation company’s survey.

But where and when to speak that fluently is another question, according to Lux Narayan, CEO of Unmetric, a social analytics platform, which did a study of Facebook vs. YouTube in regards to major brand video success.

« The most important consideration for brands when creating and publishing videos, » says Narayan, « is to look to data to make the most informed decisions on the right content and channel. »

Okay, you might have noticed a trend already: Both companies claim their findings support the overall mission of their services. That’s a given with these studies, but if you look over the findings, important insights await. After all, companies like Animoto and Unmetric, as well as video creation platform Wyzowl, know their field and how to collect information about it. And when they all come out with studies around the same time, important trends emerge.

Here’s what they found:

It’s getting crowded

According to data from a Wyzowl survey, video marketing creation is not only growing among business marketing professionals, it also a preferred way to consume.

When asked, « Where both text and video are available on the same web page, how would you prefer to learn about a product or service? »

• 80 percent said video.

Great! But here’s the other key answer Wyzowl found:

When companies were asked … « Does your business use video as a marketing tool? »

• 63 percent said yes.

That means the other third of companies are at a critical point. Either they will never have a video strategy or they’re late. Because for those who are using video, almost 99 percent said they plan to continue to do so.

There is no one place to post

The boundaries of where social video can go pushes outward every day. But while Snapchat and Instagram are clearly getting marketers’ attention, Facebook and YouTube still dominate the conversation. According to Narayan, YouTube’s advantage of being the first to the masses still matters, at least for now.