Can video be embedded in Gmail?
Gmail is the most popular email platform, with over 1.8 billion users worldwide, representing 27.21% of all email accounts.
For video email to become ubiquitous within email, compatibility with Gmail is critically important.
Does Gmail support video in email?
Currently Gmail does not support video in email, so it is not possible to embed a video within a Gmail email.
The best possible multimedia experience that can be currently featured in a Gmail email is through embedding a GIF within the email. This experience is limited by the 256 colors, that GIFs support, versus 9 million for video, and secondly the frame rate at which the GIF is set.
The multimedia experience that each Gmail recipient receives is also determined by the connection speed on which they are viewing the email, with the experience improving in direct proportion to the speed of connection.
Why does Gmail not support video email?
There is currently no universal standard approach to embedding video within email, as each of email client adopts an approach which is specific to their email service.
Gmail has currently opted to not support video.
Their reasons for this decision to not support video in email have not been published.
Our belief is that the decision is based on 3 factors:
- Google, the owner of Gmail does not believe that users are currently interested in receiving video emails.
- As the largest email service provider any action they take will have a broader impact, they thus need to be 100% confident that any change to the Gmail service is in line with consumer demand.
- The addition of video to email is perceived to increase the size of the email significantly, which would significant impact on the cost to deliver the Gmail service.
On point three, in the early days of video email, when the file was sent as an attachment that was certainly true, but as video email has evolved the video is now streamed into the email at a file size on average of 15Kb.
Without the support of Gmail video email will not become the standard.
Gmail has tested embedding video in email.
In March 2023 we observed the presence of a new feature within Gmail.
In the ” Compose” area of Gmail we noticed a new icon next to the “Add Attachment” icon.
This icon was a camera.
On selecting this camera icon the user was taken through a process which enabled them to create a video using the camera on their device, including audio. Once the video clip had been filmed the user was then able to add this to the body of a Gmail email.
When we tested sending this email, the recipient received the email with a still frame of the video in the email, with a YouTube play button in the centre, on clicking the video it played within the email browser.
This camera icon was only present in our Gmail account for around 48hours, our assumption here is that they where live testing a new Gmail feature, which enables users to send video emails via Gmail.
On reviewing the code within the Gmail “video email” we confirmed that the file format that was delivering the video experience within the Gmail browser was a GIF.
What is a video Gif?
We are aware that the term “Video Gif” is being used to describe the file format that is played in Gmail, when a Gmail recipient opens a video email.
The intent appears to be to mask the fact that Gmail accounts will receive a Gif when sent a video email. The file format “Video Gif” is not an active file format, but merely a fabricated name that infers that a file format other than a Gif is received by Gmail accounts.
