Shootsta

Free audit / 3 minutes

What is video really costing your company?

Not the invoices. The total: agency fees across every department, the tools nobody put on a contract, the rework when a regional team briefs a different supplier, and the internal hours that go into managing all of it. Ten questions and you get a total cost of ownership model your CFO and your procurement team can read.

Answer in ranges. You can fix every number afterwards, and the result shows its working on every line so nobody has to take it on trust.

01

Current state

Agency fees, tool spend, rework and internal labour, totalled into one baseline.

02

Consolidated state

The same volume through one platform and one partner, priced at your volume band.

03

The business case

Hard savings, recaptured capacity, velocity, and the outcome metrics to report against.

Built for organisations over 1,000 people in technology, financial services, healthcare, mining and aviation, where video gets commissioned by five or six departments at once and no single budget line holds the total.

Last updated 20 August 2026

The short version

An enterprise video spend audit totals four things: agency and freelance fees across every department, software bought outside a central contract, rework on projects that miss the brand or the brief, and the internal hours spent briefing, managing and approving each video. The last two rarely appear on a purchase order, which is why the real cost of a corporate video is usually more than double its invoice. This tool collects your numbers for all four and models them against a consolidated platform.

Why the invoice is the smallest part of what video costs you

In a company over 1,000 people, video does not get bought once. It gets bought by marketing, by internal comms, by HR, by sales enablement, by L&D, and by every regional team with its own budget code. Each of them finds a supplier, each of them signs off their own invoices, and none of them can see the total. That is what makes the spend hard to govern: not that it is large, but that it is split.

A benchmark 60-second explainer runs around US$3,185, and broadcast-grade enterprise work runs US$4,500 to US$8,000 per finished minute. Those figures are only the production fee. The enterprise average of 15 to 25 internal hours per video, at a loaded rate, is a second cost of the same order. Rework is a third. Tool spend is a fourth. Add them and the blended cost per video typically lands at more than twice the number on the invoice.

What the audit counts

Agency and freelance production fees

Annual volume across every function multiplied by your blended cost per finished video. Regional teams booking their own suppliers is the part most central spend reports miss.

Software and shadow IT

Screen recorders, design tools, AI avatar and voice tools, transcript editors. Individually small, charged to a dozen cost centres, and almost never renewed as one decision.

Rework and re-edits

The share of projects needing a re-edit or a reshoot because the brand was missed or the brief was misread. Modelled as production cost only, so the management time is not counted twice.

Internal labour overhead

Briefing, managing, reviewing and approving, at 15 to 25 hours a video in most enterprises, multiplied by your loaded rate. This is the line that turns a spend review into a capacity argument.

How the model works

Ten questions, answered in ranges, take about three minutes. The result is a document in three sections: your current state, the same volume through a consolidated model, and the executive ROI that falls out of the difference. Every line prints the arithmetic that produced it, and every assumption is editable on the page, so the model becomes yours rather than ours before it goes anywhere near a decision.

Two rules keep it defensible. Where you tell the tool a number is not available, it substitutes an industry planning figure and marks the line, so a borrowed number never gets carried into a budget meeting as if it were yours. And the model is allowed to return a small saving: if your production is already consolidated, it says so and points you at the speed and capacity case instead. A calculator that always returns 80 percent is a sales toy, and a CFO can smell one.

If you want to pressure-test one line rather than the whole model, the video production cost calculator compares agency, in-house and subscription pricing on a single video, and Shootsta subscription pricing sets out what a credit covers.

What a business case has to survive

A consolidation case does not fail because the saving is too small. It fails because a reviewer finds one number nobody can source, and then discounts the rest of the model along with it. So the audit result prints the assumptions it used, marks any figure that came from a benchmark rather than from you, and states plainly what it leaves out: travel and crew mobilisation, media storage, translation and versioning, and the cost of a campaign that shipped late. All four push the current-state number up, which means the saving shown is the conservative version.

If you would rather grade the program than price it, the CMO video scorecard scores coverage, brand consistency, turnaround, cost and measurement out of 25 in two minutes. The two pair well: the scorecard tells you which part of the program leaks, and the audit puts a number on it.

Questions people ask about video spend audits

What is an enterprise video spend audit?

It is a total cost of ownership review of everything an organisation spends to get video made, not just the production invoices. Four lines make up the total: agency and freelance production fees across every department, software and AI tools bought outside a central contract, rework on projects that miss the brand or the brief, and the internal hours spent briefing, managing, reviewing and approving each video. In most enterprises the last two are larger than anyone expects, because neither appears on a purchase order. This audit collects your numbers for all four and models them against a consolidated production platform.

How do you calculate the total cost of ownership for video production?

Add four things. Production: annual video volume multiplied by your average cost per finished video. Rework: the share of projects needing a re-edit, multiplied by volume and by the share of the original fee a rework consumes. Software: annual spend on video and AI tools across all cost centres. Internal labour: volume multiplied by internal hours per video multiplied by your loaded hourly rate. Divide the total by annual volume and you get a blended cost per video, which is the number to take to finance. Cost per video from an invoice is almost always less than half the blended figure.

How much does enterprise video production cost per video?

Agency pricing benchmarks sit around US$3,185 for a 60-second explainer, and US$4,500 to US$8,000 per finished minute for broadcast-grade enterprise work. Those are production fees only. Once you add the enterprise average of 15 to 25 internal hours per video at a loaded rate, plus rework and tool spend, the all-in cost of a single corporate video usually lands well above the invoice. The audit calculates your own blended number rather than quoting a benchmark at you.

How much can consolidating video production actually save?

It depends on how fragmented you are now, and the audit is built to say so honestly rather than always return a large number. Organisations running six or more suppliers with 15 to 25 internal hours per video typically model a 50 to 60 percent reduction in total cost of ownership, because the saving comes from three places at once: a volume rate instead of per-project pricing, revisions included in scope instead of billed as rework, and standardised workflows that cut the internal hours per video. Organisations already consolidated see a much smaller cost saving, and for them the case is usually about speed and recaptured capacity instead.

What does procurement need to approve a video consolidation?

Three things, in this order. A current-state baseline that includes indirect cost, not just supplier invoices, so the comparison is like for like. A future-state model with the rate assumptions written down and marked as indicative until they are quoted. And a stated list of what the model leaves out, because a business case that claims to capture everything gets discounted. The audit result prints all three, plus the four challenges procurement raises most often with an answer to each.

How long does enterprise video production take?

The industry benchmark from approved brief to final delivery is three to six weeks, and that is measured on the agency's clock rather than yours: it usually excludes the time a brief sits waiting to start. Shootsta returns a first edit in 48 hours on every plan. On a four-week cycle that is roughly 14 times faster to market, which matters most for anything tied to a launch, an event or a change announcement, where a video that lands late has already lost most of its value.

Is the audit free, and do I need to give my email?

The audit is free and there is no email form in front of the result. Your model appears as soon as you answer the tenth question, with every line showing how it was calculated. One short form unlocks the two downloadable formats, the PDF for a board pack and the CSV for finance. Sharing the result by link needs no details at all.

Can I share the audit with my CFO or procurement team?

Yes. The result has a link you can send on LinkedIn, in Microsoft Teams, or by email, and whoever opens it sees the same model with your numbers in it and can change any assumption or pull the PDF and CSV themselves. The CSV holds the raw figures in a single column so finance can re-run the arithmetic rather than take it on trust. Your answers are scored in your browser and are not stored against your name.

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