It’s hard to believe we’re almost at the end of 2016. Video marketing has been huge this year – and predicted to be more crucial in 2017 in how brands and businesses communicate with their audiences.
I thought I’d get in a little early to talk about how video and video marketing tracked during the year.
By now, you must have read at least one article on how your business should be using video to reach customers.
That’s because the market and your customers in particular are actually demanding video as a means of communication. According to Mumbrella, online video consumption increased by 27 percent in Australia in 2015 and globally by a further 19.8 percent in 2016 according to Mediaweek.
According to Marcus Seeger, author of Video marketing for profit humans are wired to watch and listen to other people talk so video as a communication medium goes right to the human subconscious and makes people remember you or your business.
How has the video landscape looked this year and what does it mean for your business?
Videos being watched on multi-screens
People are no longer watching videos just on PCs or desktops. Households now use multiple screens including tablets and mobiles.
76 per cent of online Australians watch videos on multi-screens, with 33 per cent triple-screening on two or more devices while watching TV according to the Australian multi-screen report released earlier this year.
Your video is now competing with content from two or more screens and needs to be visually powerful right from the first second to hold the viewer’s attention.
Change in watching behaviour
Longer videos are becoming appealing to viewers. Data found that 31 percent of people are watching videos longer than 10 minutes using smartphones according to Ooyala. In the same report, 54 percent of Ooyala customers streamed videos longer than 10 minutes on their tablets and 74 percent on their internet-connected TVs.
You’ve now got more freedom when it comes to the length of videos and the type of content that can be shown – some which may need a longer narrative to get the point across. Short videos are no longer the norm. According to Google Insights, there’s a strong correlation between how long an ad is viewed and brand awareness.
Video ads are on the rise
Ads on social media platforms have increased ever since Facebook introduced videos on its feed.
According to eMarketer, 57 percent of companies said they were likely to buy ads on social media while mobile ad spending has increased 26 percent between 2015 and early 2016. So more videos will be shown in news feeds, helping companies reach a wider audience and the niches that are interested in their products thanks to the segmentation function on these platforms.
Closer to home, a study shows that the video ad market will experience almost a 5x increase from 86M in 2012 to a whopping $442M by next year.
Marketers and companies are moving online because that’s where their audience is spending its time, and this audience is more receptive to your product or service if they’ve seen a video.
Viewers muting ads
Surveys show that as video ads become more prolific, people have started muting these ads on their screens. According to Clickz.com people still don’t like watching ads with sound or those with irrelevant messages. As a business, use subtitles and powerful images to get around this problem.
Companies are also using branded content advertising a specific brand that the company pays for. You would have seen these ads on YouTube by McDonald’s or health insurance companies. Attention is usually high from the audiences (you have to watch many of these ads to the end without skipping) and this leads to higher brand awareness.
Virtual reality videos
Companies are already experimenting with virtual reality by using them in exhibitions, product demonstrations and gaming. With Facebook acquiring Oculus Rift, virtual reality is touted to be the next big thing online.
Content production using virtual reality is still slow because you need special gear to experience 360° videos in all its glory, they’re expensive to produce requiring a complicated creative process and special cameras and VR headsets are heavy and bulky which stops many companies from adopting this strategy.
People also sometimes experience disorientation or headaches due to sensory overload in the brain and virtual reality still has a little longer to go.
Use of GIFs
A GIF is a format that supports both moving and still images like this list by WIRED. Companies like Hubspot are placing GIFs on their homepages and American Apparel introduced new products on its Tumblr blog using vibrant and colourful animated GIFs.
GIFs can be used in email marketing campaigns to increase interest in a new product, show how a product is used – tutorials, announce special offers or seasonal sales like above. They can also be used on website landing pages, slideshow or a social media page like what Verizon did.
Animated GIFs can add a novelty factor to your email campaigns and renew interest among an inactive database. According to BlueFly, emails that had an animated GIF delivered 12 percent more revenue than a regular email campaign. Social media platforms like Twitter now allows users to create their own GIFs in images or short videos.
Growth in personalised videos
At Creativa, we’ve seen a growth in and demand for personalised videos this year. We used personalised videos for two big campaigns – UniSuper and Western Bulldogs. For UniSuper, clickthrough rates increased, positive feedback received from fund members, the majority watched the entire 90-120 second video and an 18 percent uplift in funds received from members.
Western Bulldogs energised its inactive membership database and membership increased from 10,000 to 30,000 members as a result of personalised videos. According to Huffington Post, personalised video campaigns generated between 200 – 1500 percent increase in clickthroughs and conversion rates. In 2016, this trend is here to stay.
So there you have it folks, the top trends in video this year. What trend have you seen this year you believe will be important next year?
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