In video production, things are totally different than they were even two years ago. Here are 5 big things I've been seeing this year.

1. Audience preferences have shifted

It's been a slow and steady shift away from television and movies, but in 2026 the change is here. Audiences want short form video that feels viral. That's the way you tell your story right now.

The 3-minute brand film or tone piece that sits on your homepage has become irrelevant. They were fun to make. But honestly, the format has been stale for a while.

The expensive :30? Yeah, they're still making these. But they're simultaneously shooting a brand library they intend to use for the next three years on social.

2. New tools are changing the way we work

Forget about generative AI. It's actually systems AI that's making the huge innovations in production.

Our team has built an AI Co-Producer agent that tracks projects, drafts standard production docs, and helps handle video ingest, versioning, captioning, and so much more. When you start getting reports pulled from your project data live off your own server, it's quite a thing to witness.

It is very important to get the security right. But once the framework is in place… wow.

3. Creative needs to be multi-channel, repurposeable, and targeted

Every small business and agency can now run campaigns that punch WAY above their weight. Results like impressions, sign-ups, and lead forms can all be accelerated 10x with great creative.

And if they aren't hiring us to buy the ads, they're probably doing it themselves.

4. There is still a place for longform. Absolutely.

Every small business and brand should be eyeing YouTube as a way to bring people into their orbit.

From there it trickles downstream: your most successful videos can be boosted to generate overperformance, and the rest becomes a library that keeps working for you long after you hit publish.

5. Companies can't choose between quality and scale. They want both.

Creative directors and producers are now generating their own images and videos. They're expected to know how to do this stuff natively.

But generative AI takes almost as much time as production. It's not a light lift. And it has many, many downsides too. Especially the quality, which is just not there no matter how much creativity you try to inject into the brief.

A mix of real assets and, yes, some AI assets is what it takes to hit a cadence that's actually effective.

OK, OK. So what hasn't changed?

In a multi-platform world where almost anything is technically possible, having a creative vision that serves as your north star is the single most important factor. It will always set you apart.

And if you're outsourcing your thinking, your writing, everything to chatbots and just shooting it out into the world? Shame on you. Seriously. I can't read much more of this stuff.