2.1 Video’s ubiquitous power for the entrepreneur

The use of video in crowdfunding campaigns has become an indispensable tool for creators seeking to raise funds for their projects. Carradini and Fleischmann’s (2023) research underscores the significance of multimedia elements in crowdfunding campaigns on platforms like Kickstarter. Their study of over 327,000 campaign pages revealed that successful campaigns frequently featured images, links, and most notably, a project video. The presence of a project video, they demonstrate, has a direct positive impact on the campaign’s success rate. These results are widely supported in the literature, indicating that the use of video to deliver the pitch likely increases the entrepreneur’s chances of funding success by significant margins (Courtney et al., 2017; Johan & Zhang, 2020; X. Li et al., 2016; Mollick, 2014).
This phenomenon is not new. Early in the modern online crowdfunding era, Indiegogo (2011) reported that campaigns with videos are 2.4 times more likely to appear on the homepage and raising 114% more money than those without a video. Kickstarter likewise suggested in 2012 that, “projects with videos succeed at a much higher rate than those without (50% vs. 30%)” (O’Connell & Kurtz, 2012). Just three years later, Yeh (Yeh, 2015) confirmed this new normal with a study showing that online crowdfunding campaigns with video were found to have on average four times the funding earnings total of those projects without video.