Decoding Homepage Video Backgrounds: What FAVBs Reveal About University Brand Storytelling

Full-width, auto-playing video backgrounds (FAVBs) have rapidly become prominent “above-the-fold” real estate on higher education (HEI) homepages, replacing traditional banners and slideshows—yet they remain largely unexamined in the academic literature. This session presents a foundational content analysis of HEI homepage FAVBs to show what these videos communicate about university brand image (UBI) and how their sequencing and pacing shape interpretation.

Delivered as a talk with a lightweight methodological demo and audience discussion, we will walk through (1) how FAVBs were identified across a large set of HEI homepages, (2) how videos were programmatically split into scenes and then open-coded into a UBI-oriented thematic framework, and (3) what the resulting patterns imply for web and marketing teams who commission, edit, and deploy homepage video. The study analyzed 775 homepage FAVBs (from a curated set of 3,407 HEI homepages), programmatically segmented into 12,067 scenes, and coded into a set of UBI thematic codes (e.g., campus aesthetics, student life, teaching/training, research, athletics, value/success, brand marks, location, and more).

We’ll share key findings that are immediately actionable for brand and web strategy: FAVBs commonly assemble an implicit three‑act narrative (orientation to experience to achievement) and run at montage-like speed (average scene pace ~2.24 seconds), raising important questions about what viewers can actually absorb when FAVBs function as “background.” We close with a practical “design grammar” for composing (or revising) homepage FAVBs into modular story units: “place” hooks, “experience” vignettes, and “achievement” clips, that can be recombined across touchpoints (homepage, program pages, social stories) to reinforce UBI consistently.