Videos for your phone: Google’s AI now makes them “to measure” (and saves you thousands of euros)

Producing content for mobile devices no longer has to be a drain on resources. Google’s latest update lets you create vertical videos from a simple photo, eliminating hours of editing and production waste.

There’s one truth every business owner has to accept: your customers are looking at you through a vertical screen. Whether it’s advertising or corporate presentations, the format that works today is the mobile phone format.

However, producing these videos has become a parasite on company budgets. You often find yourself stuck in an inefficient workflow that eats into margins every day.

The chaos of traditional video production

Until yesterday, creating a video for digital channels meant facing three huge problems:

• Forced cropping:

  Recording a video in the standard (horizontal) format and then having to “crop” it to fit on a phone. The result? Half the image lost and terrible quality.

• Doing the work twice:

  Paying professionals or collaborators to do the same job twice: one shoot for the computer and one for the phone.

• Waiting time:

  Waiting days for the editor to fix the shots, lighting, and movement.

All this isn’t just “work”; it’s operational disorder. And disorder in business always comes at a very steep price.

The cost analysis: how much does sticking with the old method cost you?

Business owners who don’t look at the numbers think videos are an “investment in image.” The truth is that if you don’t use the right tools, they’re just a passive expense.

Here’s the money you’re wasting today:

1. Wages paid for mechanical tasks:

   If an employee of yours spends three hours cropping videos or trying to adapt them to the vertical format, you’re paying for human expertise to do a job a machine could do for free in a few seconds.

2. Doubled set costs:

   Every time you have to organize shoots specifically for phones, you’re wasting funds you could use to sell more or improve your service.

3. The speed penalty:

   While you wait for the video to be ready, your competitors are already online. Being late means losing customers who have already chosen someone else who was faster than you.

The solution: Veo 3.1 and using reference images

Google has just released an update to its video-generation system called Veo 3.1. The big difference from before is its ability to create videos that are vertical by default.

There’s no need to “crop” anything anymore. But the real revolution is the use of a reference photo.

You can give the software a photo of your product, your office, or one of your collaborators. The AI will use that image to generate a coherent video, with natural movements and realistic expressions. You no longer have to explain every detail in words: the machine “sees” what you want and turns it into a video in ultra-high resolution (up to 4K).

Graffico’s Take 🔴

Why do we analyze these technical innovations at Graffico ? Because our goal isn’t to get you to use the latest tech gadget, but to help you plug the holes in your budget.

Adopting artificial intelligence for content production isn’t a matter of fashion; it’s an economic survival strategy. If your company can produce ten high-quality videos in the same amount of time (and at the same cost) as it previously took to make just one, you’ve gained a huge competitive advantage.

Stopping paying for unnecessary complexity and starting to use technology to simplify processes is the only way to protect your profit margins in an increasingly fast-paced market.

Technology should be a tireless employee who works at zero cost, not a cost center that keeps you up at night.