Explainer video examples: five formats, two public series and what to copy

What explainer video examples can and cannot teach you

People who look for explainer video examples usually have a product or an idea that takes too long to explain in a paragraph. The video exists to remove that delay: a stranger watches for a short time and understands what the thing is, who it is for and what to do next. Most galleries show finished clips and stop there, which hides the part that matters, the decision behind each one.

So the useful way to look at an example is to ask what it was asked to do. A film that makes a science topic clear to curious people and a film that sells a subscription share some craft, but they are built differently. The examples below come from organisations that publish their own videos, and each is read for its choice of format, scope and structure, not for its style.

Five formats and the job each one does

Animated 2D uses drawn characters and scenes to tell a small story. It suits an idea with no natural picture, such as a service, a process or a feeling, because the illustrator can invent the picture. Motion graphics move shapes, icons, numbers and text without characters. They suit data, software and anything abstract that should look clean and precise.

Whiteboard animation draws the explanation as the voice speaks, line by line, so the viewer watches the idea being built. A screencast records a real screen with narration and is the plainest way to show how software works. Live action films real people and places, and carries the most trust when the subject is a human service, a workshop or a product held in a hand.

The formats mix freely, and most commercial explainers do: a live presenter for the first ten seconds, motion graphics for the method, a screencast for the proof. The rule is to pick the format from the weakest point of your explanation. If people do not believe it, show real people. If they cannot picture it, draw it. If they cannot follow the steps, show the screen.

NASA’s Earth Minute: one question per episode

NASA Science describes Earth Minute as a fun whiteboard animation series that explains Earth science to the science-curious. The page lists twelve episodes, among them Why Does NASA Study Earth?, Sea Level Rise, Cloudy Forecast and Greenland Ice. The page gives no durations, so the name carries the promise of brevity, not a measured number.

What the series teaches is scope. Each title is a topic small enough for one short film, and the audience is named in one phrase. The first episode answers the question every later episode depends on, why the agency studies the planet at all. A business can copy this directly: one video for one question a customer actually asks, with the question itself as the title.

The UN’s BBNJ videos: a long subject split into parts

The United Nations site for the BBNJ Agreement, a treaty on marine biodiversity, has an Explainer Video section in its navigation. One page, dated 15 January 2026, carries a video titled An introduction to the BBNJ Agreement. Another, dated 16 February 2026, is described as an explanatory video on Part 4 of the agreement, on environmental impact assessments.

The approach is an introduction first, then one video per part of the subject. Neither page states a duration or whether the film is animated, so the lesson is about structure and not style. A service with many stages, a long process or a product with several modules is explained better by a short overview and a few focused films than by a single film that tries to cover everything.

Problem, solution, method, proof and action: the script spine

Most working explainers follow the same five beats. They open on a problem the viewer recognises, in the viewer’s own words. They name the solution in one sentence. They show how it works in a few steps, because every extra step is one more thing the viewer must remember. They give one piece of proof, a result, a real example or a named source. They end with one action, said aloud and shown on screen.

The length of the script decides the length of the film, and the script is the cheapest place to cut. Read it aloud with a timer before anything is drawn or filmed. If it runs long, remove a beat or an example, not words from the narration, because a rushed voice makes a clever film feel anxious. Write for the ear: short sentences, one idea each, no jargon that a visual cannot explain.

Write the voice and the pictures as two columns. What the narrator says and what the viewer sees at that moment should support each other, not repeat each other. If the narrator says three steps and the screen shows three steps, the film is saying one thing twice. Let the picture carry the example and the voice carry the reason.

Captions are part of the film, not an extra

The W3C’s Web Content Accessibility Guidelines are specific here. Success Criterion 1.2.2, at Level A, says captions are provided for all prerecorded audio content in synchronized media, except when the media is an alternative for text and is clearly labelled as such. An explainer with a voiceover on a web page is normally covered by this rule, so plan the captions as part of the job and not as a repair afterwards.

Captions are also practical. They serve anyone who cannot play the sound at that moment, and they let a viewer check a name or a number by eye. Write the captions from the final script, check names and numbers, and time them to the speech. Ask the studio to deliver the caption file with the video, so the same file works on your site and on every platform.

Where the film will live: site, ads and YouTube

On your own site, an explainer works best close to the decision it supports: at the top of a service page, beside a pricing table, or in an email that says what the product does. Each placement may want a different cut, a short one for an advertisement and the full one for the page. Decide that before production, because a second cut is cheap when it is planned and expensive when it is improvised.

For YouTube, the platform’s own page of recommended upload settings lists MP4 as the container, H.264 for video and AAC-LC among the audio codecs. It calls 16:9 the standard aspect ratio on a computer and says other shapes, vertical or square, are adapted by the player. Settings change, so read that page on the day you deliver the master, and keep the original files in case a platform asks for another format.

What to prepare before you order an explainer

Write the single sentence the video must make clear, the viewer it is for, and the action you want afterwards. Collect the proof you may use, the facts the script can state, and the places where the film will be shown. Choose the format by the weakest point of your explanation, and decide who approves the script, because a script changed after the voice is recorded costs more than one changed on paper.

If that list exists and you want the film made for you, Explainer video at VITON13 Studio covers the script, storyboard, visual system and a captioned master that makes one offer clear in 90 seconds. It costs from $53 AI-assisted or $73 human-led, with a turnaround of 3–5 working days. Your one-sentence offer and the proof you can show are what turn that into an exact estimate.