Video marketing trends for 2023

The internet is a fast paced landscape where one day your meme is funny and a week later it’s considered stale and irrelevant.  Now, as we enter 2023, what will the online landscape look like and what can be expect in the world of video marketing this year? We take a look at some of the top trends.

Shorts

Shorts are the attention span’s best friend. Whether you’re scrolling through a how-to video, a cute dog getting groomed or a satisfying video of someone cleaning a rug, short form content is everywhere on social media. The impressive rise of TikTok is the perfect example of this, boasting a combined viewership of over 45 million a day and on average users spend 75 minutes on the app. Instagram is creeping up on TikTok, with users spending 44 minutes on the app which is now massively embracing short form video content.

TikTok really took off during the pandemic, growing a whopping 180% between 15 and 25-year-olds and has been downloaded 3.5 billion times. It’s only fair that other platforms would want a piece of the action. Instagram is focusing a lot on reels to help maintain the user base and hopefully grow, while YouTube had launched YouTube Shorts in late 2020. YouTube encourages creators to use short form content to help grow their own channels with the use of the YouTube algorithm making it almost a necessity to use YouTube Shorts for channel growth.

Adverts have also had to adapt. Advertisers now must sell a product between 5-10 seconds before the horrifying skip button and catch the attention of scrollers.

Shorts have over 5 trillion views across all platforms. Seeing how effective this type of video is and how influential TikTok, Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts are, short form content is not going anywhere any time soon.

Silent videos

This may sound counterproductive but 85% of Facebook videos are consumed without audio.

How can you watch a video without sound? This is where captions come in – captions are integral to helping silent video succeed and are more accessible, especially for people with hearing loss.

These videos are also consumed when audio is not appropriate, such as being on a public transport without earphones, office workers or anywhere around people when you are bored.

Silent videos are usually paired with shorts, as short form content is easier to subtitle and caption than long form content.

However, we should point out that for videos that do have sound, it is still very important to include captions AND get the audio right. Have you ever tried watching a video with bad sound?

User Generated Content (USG)

What is USG? USG is original, brand specific content created by users and customers which is then republished on the brand’s social media channels.

It may come in the form of a video, a photo and even a podcast. The three main suspects are back again with TikTok, Instagram Reels and YouTube being the most popular social media to use. This makes sense as the audience for the three alone is huge.

Why is USG so popular? It all comes down to authenticity. It’s personal and honest, it doesn’t feel like a huge corporation is force-feeding you an advert. It’s more of a friend or a trustworthy figure recommending you a product to try.

An estimated 85% of consumers say that user-generated content is more trustworthy than traditional content from brands. A further 68% claim they find USG more authentic and another 57% say that they follow a brand because of their use of USG. It’s a great way for marketers to engage with an audience in a fun and meaningful way.

USG is also a great way for users to click the video and they are straight into the website ready to buy the product. This is called ‘shoppable’ video content and can work hand in hand with USG. The idea is to make it as easy as possible for the customer; they can purchase an item they love without ever leaving whatever social media they are on. This can be used on USG videos, an image or on stories such as Instagram and Facebook.