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#BizTrends2020: Top digital video and influencer marketing trends to consider
Data-led video and influencer campaigns
With the increased amount of consumption of online video and each social media platform prioritising the medium, trying to reach customers will become increasingly more important and difficult. Plug-and-play video simply won’t drive the same results as it did and brands will need to make informed decisions about when to use video, what content to include in the video and who is being reached at which point in the sales cycle in order to maintain results.
More and more clients will be seeking out specialist services to extract and interpret important analytics on YouTube, Instagram and Facebook to determine what works and what doesn’t. Using data doesn’t diminish the creative, but rather provides focus in your audience segmentation and personalisation of video. Without data-backed decisions, video marketing becomes subjective and video gets produced based on what looks the most beautiful and not on which performs the best.
In terms of influencer marketing, with shrinking marketing spend, advertisers are turning their attention away from mass media and focusing more on results-driven influencer campaigns, which are led by the data of who follows the creators, the quality of their conversion and their engagement.
Only marketers who have access to analytics will have the potential to drive conversion and measure accurate results. This follows the trend in 2019 of working with micro and nano influencers to drive true conversion, as in SA audiences of smaller than 10,000 on Instagram almost drive twice the engagement.
As a side note, in 2020 the IAB will also have its first year of the Digital Influencer Committee working through a roadmap for standards, which will encourage the marketers to spend more.
Long-form is on the rise
A bit dramatic but it is interesting to note that in 2017, 80% of videos online were shorter than 5-minutes long, and with attention spans getting shorter and shorter you would expect that trend of shorter videos to increase. It won’t.
SimilarWeb in 2019 reported that of the 78 million monthly visits to YouTube in South Africa, the average time spent per visit was just over 32 minutes – double that of any of the other most popular sites.
Long-form video allows marketers to build trust with consumers in a memorable way, driving longer-term ROI than the exciting but forgettable short-form video content trend on social media that is drowned out by the many other shorter-form messages that are attempting to grab consumer attention.
Integration across channels
Video drives the most results compared to any other ad format – for the same amount of real estate you can transfer more information, get clear messaging, build a stronger connection and drive more action.
Video is incredibly hardworking and because the perception that video needs to be ridiculously expensive is starting to fade, marketers will start to think about how to use various formats of video at various stages of the marketing journey and across platforms with cross-promotion, personalisation per platform, user-generated content and helpful how-to video content. Marketers are going to start to look at how to tweak video assets to suit various phases of marketing and the various platforms to run longer campaigns with solidified consistent messaging.
Video podcasts
In 2019 we saw a rise in brands investing in podcast series. It is an audio and visual content-generating exercise that allows conversations to begin and content to be used over a longer period of time. This trend of filmed podcasts will only increase in 2020.
Increased video advertising
Because of the insurgence of video, standing out and gaining engaged views on video content is becoming increasingly more difficult and so in 2020, we expect to see an increase in the video advertising and media spend budgets as brands try to drive direct measurable results from campaigns that convert the most consumers.
About Danilo Acquisto
Danilo Acquisto is the CEO of Special Effects Media South Africa, a YouTube Multi-Channel Network (MCN) backed by international partners, which launched in 2017. Special Effects Media is the first commercial Multichannel Network in South Africa, and brings creators, brands, content and audiences together. Danilo is also a radio presenter on Good Hope FM.
