Video marketing is hot and predicted to get even hotter. There’s plenty of data to prove it. According to Social Media Week, 78% of people watch videos online every week—55% daily. Video consumption on mobile devices has grown exponentially at a pace of 100% a year! Marketers and brands are taking note—99% say they’ll continue to use video marketing.
They’ll also be continually looking for new ways to connect and engage consumers in an increasingly crowded video landscape. Here are 20 predictions for video trends from industry experts to help fuel your 2020 video content strategy.
1. Niche will matter more
Videos will be created to appeal to narrow, niche market segments rather than the masses. “Messages will be customer-first and ultra-targeted,” according to Envision Creative.
2. Automation will be a must-have
Driven by their need to ramp up video content strategy and production, marketers will increasingly be turning to tools to help them automate the process while creating great video output at scale, says Jim Kennedy, SVP strategy and enterprise development with the Associated Press.
3. Video shopping will grow
Shoppable videos anyone? It’s a natural next step for retailers who have already captured consumer attention. “In 2020, we will see more and more video ads linking to products to make them easily shoppable, predicts Envision Creative.
4. …and so will degree video
We’ll see an uptick in marketing trends 2020 using of 360-degree videos which, while not viewed as often as standard video, generate higher CTR, according to Social Media Week. The thing about 360-degree video is that it’s a great way to immerse the viewer into the action. Combined with AR and VR it can pack a powerful brand punch for your video content strategy.
5. AR advertising will become more important
And, speaking of AR, Joe Sweeney, Chief Marketing Officer with MakeMeReach tells us that AR advertising will become more and more important in 2020—it’s already being used in Snapchat and Facebook.
6. Marketers will explore face-to-face
1:1 video experiences will also continue to grow in popularity as one of the marketing trends for 2020, according to 99designs.com. “There’s nothing quite like seeing another person and looking them in the eye to truly communicate effectively,” they say.
7. 5G will drive more automation
5G is likely to boost video demand and the need for automation tools says Laurent Lasserre, managing director, EMEA, with Wibbitz.
8. Privacy rules will lead to innovation
Here’s an interesting perspective. While CCPA and other privacy laws tend to be viewed as challenges, David Kashak, CEO of Connatix suggests that they may also present opportunities for innovation. He points to contextually relevant ad targeting as an example. “For video advertising, this would mean targeting based on content within the video itself, rather than person’s prior actions,” he says.
9. Consumers will engage with interactive
Interactive video, a new form of media, will encourage greater consumer engagement as viewers are given options to take different paths as they interact with the video, according to Social Media Week.
10. Instagram will remain strong
Instagram isn’t going away any time soon and, predicts Envision Creative, Instagram stories will continue to dominate in 2020. People feel special when they have the opportunity to “see behind the scenes, sneak peeks of new products, promotional codes/discounts, etc.,” they say.
Check out one of our favorite videos REVOLT created in the Wibbitz platform below, then click here to watch how Wibbitz is helping REVOLT reach music lovers across every platform with video.
11. CRO will be a core strategy element
Digital marketing guru Neil Patel emphasizes the importance of conversion rate optimization (CRO), according to Impact. “As salespeople and marketers, we want to cut through the noise, find our potential customers, educate and empower them, and then seal the deal,” they say. Focusing on CRO should be a core element of your video content strategy.
12. Production values will give way to real life
Eva Taylor, head of social and marketing operations at Hootsuite, predicts a shift “away from inauthentic, overly polished content in favour of short, raw and highly engaging videos that better reflect real life.” This trend, she says, has been fueled by the “explosive adoption of platforms such as TikTok, as well as the introduction of new features such as Reels on Instagram and live streaming on LinkedIn.
13. More platform optimization will drive results
Marketers and brands will be well-served to optimize their videos for each social platform in 2020, according to Envision Creative. That’s a best practice to boost engagement and drive results. “We can already see that native video content on Facebook performs better than just posting a YouTube link,” they say.
14. Marketers and brands will explore vlogging
99designs.com admits that vlogging is a video genre that tends to be poked fun at but, they predict, it will grow in popularity in 2020. “Now you have YouTube, Instagram and Snapchat as popular vlogging platforms. With the addition of live streaming as a feature, vloggers are diversifying the type of content they present,” they say.
15. Video will be used to educate
Video isn’t just for entertaining, it can also be leveraged as a powerful tool for deeper education, according to Impact. It’s especially powerful for people who are visual learners—and there are a lot of them! Jeff Rubenstein, VP product strategy, enterprise and learning with Kaltura, agrees that this will be one of the video trends we’ll see in 2020.“Companies will not be able to effectively retrain at scale without using a number of new video-driven technologies,” he says.
16. Employees will get in the game
Vanessa Lustosa de Oliveira, social media manager with Bouygues Energies et Services, predicts that employee generated content will take hold in 2020 as employees “are now able to produce great quality on-the-go videos with their smartphones.”
17. Archival content will be hot
The 2020 election will drive the need for archival video content, says Joe Ellis, CEO of Vidrovr. “…video coverage of classic niche and long tail topics will drastically expand in 2020,” he predicts.
18. Video search will grow
Google hasn’t ignored the rising popularity of video. In 2020, according to 99designs.com, Google will be using AI to fuel the ability for users to do search queries via video “and have these autoplay on search results pages,” they say.
19. Social and video platforms will invest in wearables
Ken Gibbs, VP, digital video and social content with BET predicts that more social platforms will invest in wearables like Facebook’s Portal.
20. Video production will remain strong
Finally, in terms of marketing trends 2020, we predict an environment of more, more, more when it comes to the production of video by marketers and brands in both B2B and B2C markets.
There you have it—20 expert predictions for the world of video in 2020. This is really just the tip of the iceberg. To learn more about what we and our go-to group of video experts sees for 2020, download the latest installation of our annual white paper.