The consumption of vertical video on mobile is at all time high, thanks to the roaring market disruptor Snapchat. To compete for a slice of the cake, other social platforms have not only launched Snapchat-style features like Instagram Stories, Facebook Stories, and WhatsApp Status in quick succession, but have also rapidly expanded their monetization capabilities to support vertical video ads on both desktop and mobile. Now vertical video feeds on Facebook will expand to the entire screen with one click on mobile – same as Twitter – and will transfer to a 9:16 floating player with no black bar letterboxing on desktop. For Snapchat and Instagram Stories, vertical video ads are naturally blending into users’ daily feeds.
While social platforms are shifting to become more vertical-centric, publishers and brands are focusing on creating more vertical content to feed the demand. Almost a year has gone by since major social platforms started to fully support vertical video. It’s time to take a quick look back to see how much value that vertical video has brought to Facebook and other social video platforms. We compiled data from our own internal research along with findings from other leaders in the industry, and found vertical video to be the winning content format for these 7 important social video metrics:
1. Engagement
Audiences that prefer viewing from mobile screens for their daily dose of social media are increasingly giving vertical video their nod of approval. When analyzing our own content marketing efforts, we found vertical videos to attract almost four times more engagement than square videos on Facebook, and 2.5 times more on Twitter.
2. Reach
We also found that in terms of reach on Facebook, vertical videos are getting in front of 13.8% more audiences than square videos, and over 90% more than posts with an embedded image.
3. Unique video views
When we tried out using different formats for our Weekly Roundup videos, the vertical versions clearly received the most attention – with 100% more video views, and 130% more unique viewers.
4. Click-throughs
When promoting site content on social media, the number one goal is to actually drive users to your site – which is not an easy feat on “walled gardens” like Facebook. We tried out using Wibbitz Snippets, a unique format of 10-second vertical video, to promote blog content on our Facebook page – and found posts with a Snippet teaser to generate 4.6 times more clicks than posts with embedded image.
5. Swipe-through rate
Vertical video not only increases interactions on Facebook and Twitter, but also on Instagram Stories. The platform’s new vertical-only, Snapchat-inspired section has already generated over 100 million video views a day since its launch – and since it introduced embedded links within Stories for verified accounts, the platform has become a great way for brands to drive traffic with a whopping 15-25% swipe-through rate.
6. Ad recall
Brightcove’s latest social video study found that consumers prefer watching video to get to know a brand online. According to Facebook’s internal test, vertical video ads in particular were the most memorable to consumers, with a three to nine point increase in ad recall.
7. Completion rate
Mobile ad platform MediaBrix found that vertical videos see a 90% higher completion rate compared to horizontal videos. According to their data, less than 30% of users will turn their phones sideways to watch an ad, and those users who do turn their phones only watch about 14% of the video ad.