Energy Video Ads Surge: 72% Execs Go Digital by 2028

It’s kind of stunning to see 72% of energy sector executives now say digital advertising will be their main marketing channel by 2028, especially when that number was only 45% back in 2023. That jump tells you everything you need to know. The old idea of the energy industry as a dinosaur is dead, and they’re getting sharp with digital, especially video. So how do you actually make video ads that connect with this crowd?

The Surge in Digital Ad Spend: 18% Year-Over-Year Growth

The spending on digital ads in the energy world isn’t just going up. It’s rocketing. We’re looking at a projected 18% year-over-year increase in video ad spend through 2027, according to an IAB report, which is a frankly blistering pace. This isn’t companies chasing a fad. They have no choice. They have to explain incredibly complex things like new carbon capture tech or the details of their environmental, social, and governance (ESG) promises. You just can’t do that with a print ad. A static banner doesn’t get across the value of a new smart grid solution to an investor or a regulator, but video can.

I see this constantly with my own industrial clients. Budgets that used to be earmarked for a big booth at a trade show are now being funneled into digital video campaigns that can hit a global, specialized audience with scary precision. The return on investment for a good video explaining a new drilling technique, for example, almost always smokes the return from a physical exhibition booth. It’s about getting the right content to the right engineering team, and doing it efficiently.

B2B Decision-Makers Prefer Video: Over 60% for Product Research

If you still think B2B buyers in energy just sit around reading whitepapers all day, you’re going to get left behind. HubSpot Research found that over 60% of them would rather watch a video when researching products. Think about what that means. If your competition has a video explaining their new industrial pump system and you’ve just got a PDF brochure, you’ve already lost a lot of ground. Video gives them a chance to actually see the thing work, to understand a complex animated diagram, or hear from another engineer who’s happy with it. It just builds more confidence.

The buying process for something like specialized pipeline inspection gear or advanced renewable energy components is long and involves a whole committee of people (these aren’t impulse buys). They demand clear, easy-to-understand information, and video is perfect for breaking down dense technical specs into digestible pieces. A well-made video can prove reliability, explain how you meet tough industry standards, and even give a virtual tour of the factory, which creates a level of transparency that a few JPEGs never could.

Geographic Targeting: Prioritizing Industrial Hubs

You can’t just target ‘the US’ with your video ads and expect to get anywhere. Targeting in the energy sector has to be surgically precise. If you’re selling to upstream oil and gas, you should be concentrating your budget on places like Houston’s Energy Corridor, Midland, Texas, or Aberdeen, Scotland. For renewables, you’d be looking at specific wind farm zones or solar manufacturing clusters in Arizona or Germany. It’s not a guess. EMarketer reported that this kind of location-based targeting can boost click-through rates by up to 45% for B2B industrial ads.

This precision isn’t just about IP addresses in the right city, it’s about knowing the local business culture. An ad for Houston needs to speak to people working at the major exploration and production companies, whereas an ad for the Permian Basin might need to target independent operators or service companies. You have to tweak the creative to match the local reality. A video about solutions for extreme weather conditions, for instance, will hit a lot harder on the Gulf Coast than it will for a crew working in the relatively temperate North Sea. Same industry, different worlds.

Interactive Video Elements: 30% Higher Engagement

Nobody wants to just sit and watch a video passively anymore. The campaigns that include interactive video elements get a 30% higher engagement rate within the energy sector. We’re talking about simple things like clickable annotations, polls, or even choose-your-own-adventure style branching that lets a viewer decide what they want to learn about. For an industry built on technical details, this is an incredible tool for making complex information stick.

Imagine a video that’s supposed to explain a new industrial safety protocol. Instead of just talking at them for three minutes, the interactive version could let an engineer click on a piece of equipment to see its specific safety features, take a quick quiz to prove they understand the new rule, or download the full spec sheet right from the video player. It turns watching into doing. And for you, the marketer, the data you get back is gold, you know exactly which features people are clicking on, which parts they’re re-watching, and that information feeds directly into your sales team’s follow-up.

Mobile-First Strategies: 55% of Professionals on Smartphones

That old picture of an energy executive chained to their desktop all day is completely wrong. Nielsen data shows 55% of these professionals are looking at industry news and content on their phones or tablets, usually while commuting or walking around a site. Your video ads have to work on mobile. Period. And that’s more than just making the player responsive. It means designing for mobile from the start. That means shorter video durations, captions so it works with the sound off, and vertical formats. These aren’t suggestions, they’re requirements.

Picture a field engineer on a remote site. They’re pulling up data on a tablet. A video ad that loads instantly, is easy to see on a small screen, and gets its point across in 15 seconds is going to work. A five-minute desktop-style commercial is going to get skipped. Because they’re consuming content all day, not just at a desk, mobile lets you reach them at multiple points. If you ignore mobile, you’re basically telling half your potential audience you don’t care about them, which is a bad move in this competitive field.

Challenging Conventional Wisdom: The “Conservative Industry” Myth

A lot of people still think the energy sector is too “conservative” and slow for modern digital marketing, especially video. That idea is just flat-out wrong in 2026. Yes, their investment cycles are long and regulations are a pain, but their use of digital marketing has exploded. All the data we’ve just looked at, the projected 18% growth in video spend, the fact that over 60% of B2B buyers prefer it, proves the industry is getting very good at it because they have to be, whether it’s to recruit top talent, get funding for transition projects, or just manage public perception.

From what I’ve seen professionally, people confuse operational caution with marketing sluggishness. Of course they’re careful with their engineering and safety protocols, people’s lives are on the line. But in their marketing, they’re becoming much more nimble. You’re seeing energy companies invest in VR facility tours and AR applications for training. They’re producing these beautiful, immersive video stories about their sustainability work. If you treat the energy sector’s marketing departments like they’re still in the 1990s, you’re going to miss a massive opportunity.

The energy sector’s big move into video advertising isn’t a minor tweak. It’s a fundamental change in how these companies talk to the world. Marketers who get this will build smart, data-informed video strategies that actually speak to the industry’s real needs and its very specific audience.