VoiceOverXtra - Report Says Voice Over Is $4.4 Billion Annual Business

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VOICE OVER INDUSTRY
Report Says Voice Over Is $4.4 Billion
Global Business - Led By Entertainment
October 10, 2017

(VOXtra) - Voice over is a changing industry - with a dollar value of $4.4 billion in jobs completed annually by voice actors worldwide (as of 2015), according to a recently-released study - Report on the Global Voice Over Market - commissioned by Voices.com, the online global voice over marketplace.

A category labeled "entertainment" accounts for 58% of those dollars, far exceeding amounts spent globally on advertising (19%), business (18%) and education (5%).

And while 14% of the jobs are completed there, North America brings in 19% of the overall global dollar volume, according to the report.

Also in North America, "corporate promotional work" accounts for the greatest share of voice over work, at 24%.

ABOUT THE REPORT

Voices.com says it commissioned this "independent study to craft a high-level overview of the vast opportunities that exist, including sectors of growth, as well as the broad-scope value of the market."

The conclusions are an extrapolation of data "collected from Voices.com's database of more than 250,000 national and international job transactions, as well as publicly available industry statistics," according to an announcement about the report. It used "the most recently available 2015 information."

What data sources were used, beyond Voices' own stats? For instance, does the data include work generated by voice actors through their own self-marketing efforts?

Voices.com CEO David Ciccarelli tells VoiceOverXtra that the "publicly available industry statistics" include data from the Audio Publishers Association, Unesco (a United Nations organization), Statistica (business data collector), Coursera (online education) "and many more (sources)."

Data from Voicebank.net - the online casting company for jobs from agents - was not included because the report was completed prior to Voices' acquisition of that company this past summer, Ciccarelli adds.

PROJECTS BY DOLLAR VOLUME

The report breaks down the dollar share contributed by different types of projects. This is shown on a global level - excluding North America projects, and by North America projects alone.

The global dollar share per project type, excluding North America is:

Animation: 53.2%
Corporate Promotional: 13.8%
Internet Videos: 9.1%
Other (including animated movies, radio, documentaries, voice mail, mobile and console games): 8.1%
Television Commercial: 7.7%
Audiobooks: 3.6%
E-Learning: 4.6%

And in North America alone, the dollar share per project type is:

Animation: 22.3%
Corporate Promotional: 24.3%
Internet Videos: 17.5%
Other (including animated movies, radio, documentaries, voice mail, mobile and console games): 8.9%
Television Commercial: 8.9%
Audiobooks: 13%
E-Learning: 5.1%

'UNEXPECTED FINDINGS'

"There are some unexpected findings regarding the type of projects and where they happen geographically," Ciccarelli says in an announcement about the report.

For instance:

"While radio commercials are often what come to mind when thinking of voice over, those projects actually represent less than one percent of the total market.
"Globally, animation - specifically videos less than 20 minutes - represent slightly more than half of the total work done, but in North America, only about one fifth of total voice over spending.
"North America, on the other hand, had proportionally much greater shares of the work completed in corporate promotional videos, internet videos and audiobook projects - with those happening significantly more often than elsewhere in the world."

TRACKING THE TRENDS

Ciccarelli says that when comparing the research findings to his company's internal data, "a significant shift in the role of voice over" appears.

"In North America, we're not observing an actual decline in animation work, but the growth of other types of projects at a faster rate.

"Consider how video has become part of our daily lives," he says. "Social streams, formerly full of pictures, are now near exclusively full of video. Whether those are promo reels, educational pieces or otherwise, they require a voice.

"This auditory dimension of how we consumer media is prevalent in ways we've never seen before, and we expect this shift in North America to be experienced further on a global level."

Click here for the full report.

Based in London, Canada, Voices.com describes itself as the "largest global online marketplace for audio and voice over products."

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