Software companies share one difficulty when they commission an ad: the product is a screen. A plain recording of that screen tends to look like a support video, with small text, full menus and details that mean nothing to a new buyer.
To see how the category handles this, we reviewed 416 ads published between February 2022 and October 2026. Of these, 307 came from the official YouTube channels of 44 brands and their campaign partners, including Notion, HubSpot, Atlassian, Stripe and Salesforce. The other 109 came from searches for award-level and craft work. For each ad we sampled six to eight frames and recorded the format, the transitions, the on-screen text and the ending.
One limit matters from the start. This study shows what brands do. It does not show which ads produced results, because we had no performance data. Read it as a picture of the current standard in the category.
Most ads show the product
The interface appears in 239 of the 416 ads, or 57%. Among the 173 ads from SaaS companies, the share rises to 73%.
Brand films have their place, but in this category the product itself is usually on screen.
Ads without people rebuild the interface
Across all ads, 140 show a rebuilt interface and 102 show a screen recording, and 21 use both. The gap widens in the 149 ads that feature no people: 84 rebuild the interface and 27 record it, a ratio of about three to one. On the brands' own channels alone, that ratio is about two to one (52 to 23).
Rebuilding means redrawing the screens as design, so they can be simplified, enlarged and moved. HubSpot's film for its Claude connector is a clear example: one typed claim on a plain background, followed by a rebuilt chat window and a chart.
This approach has three practical advantages. Irrelevant menus are removed, text stays legible on a phone, and no real customer data appears on screen.
One in three ads features no people
Of the 416 ads, 149 (36%) show no clearly visible human face in the frames we sampled, which is what we mean here by no people. On the brands' own channels the figure is 30%, because the award searches contained a higher share of this kind of work.
These ads rely on type. Animated text appears in 66% of them, compared with 49% of the full set. Dropbox's film for Dash follows this pattern, with typed headlines above clean interface cards.
For a smaller company, this format has a clear appeal. It requires no actors, location or film crew, and on-screen text can be changed for another language or market without a new shoot.
The typical film runs for about 50 seconds
The median length is about 52 seconds, and only 29% of the ads run for 30 seconds or less. We limited the brand-channel search to films of 6 to 120 seconds, and these are mainly films that brands publish on YouTube, so paid social versions are likely to be shorter.
Shorter structures do exist. Atlassian's 15-second Jira ad grows the interface out of the logo into a roadmap, then closes on the logo with a single call to action.
Hard cuts are the default
Hard cuts appear in 353 ads, or 85%. More elaborate transitions are far less common: a morph appears in 90 ads (22%), and one object carrying through to the next scene appears in 84 (20%). In the ads without people, the morph share rises to 40%, or 29% on the brands' own channels.
Some films use both: 94 ads (23%) combine hard cuts with a morph or a carried object. Our reading is that the cuts separate ideas, while the elaborate transition is kept for one or two key moments. In Framer's brand film, a typed prompt becomes a design object and then the site itself.
Four in five ads end on a logo
A logo end card closes 335 ads, or 81%. Among SaaS ads the share is 89%. The close is rarely where a film stands out, but it is the established convention, so leaving it out should be a deliberate decision.
How to read these numbers
The sample has limits. On brand channels we took up to eight of the most-viewed eligible films per brand, at 6 to 120 seconds, and excluded tutorials and demos, so this is not a random sample. All 416 ads are in 16:9 format, so it says nothing about vertical pacing. We labelled the ads by eye from sampled frames, which means fast transitions are under-counted, and we did not assess voice-over or music. The award searches were keyword searches on YouTube, so those ads are not all verified award winners, and some come from video agencies rather than brands.
What to do this week
- Watch your current product video on a phone with the sound off, and note where the text becomes difficult to read.
- Choose the one screen that best shows the value of your product. Most of the film should be built around it.
- Write the main claim of the ad in a single sentence before any design work starts.
- Prepare a clean demo account with fictional data, so that no customer information can reach the film.
- Decide the ending in advance: your logo, held on screen, with one clear next step.
We use this research when we plan the animated ads we produce for B2B companies. It gives a useful starting point, and the decisions that matter most still depend on your product and your buyer.