Over the past few years, video content has grown from simply another marketing tool to an essential part of any marketing strategy.
The percentage of businesses that use video as a marketing tool has soared from 61% to 91% since 2016. Today, companies of all sizes and industries invest in video marketing – and report increases in leads, sales, and brand awareness.
We’ve collected the top video marketing trends that reveal why this tool is so important today.
Let’s get started.
How We Conducted Our Research
We looked at years of data from Google Trends to discover insights based on search term popularity. We also studied reports, articles, and announcements from trusted sources including Statista, The New York Times, and Google, as well as reports based on surveys of marketing professionals.
Video Marketing Trends We Discovered
Here are the 10 most important video marketing trends to watch. As these trends shape how video content is produced and shared with consumers, Filmora offers the tools for you to create effective video content and reach your marketing goals.
1. Use of video as a marketing tool has increased from 61% in 2016 to 91% in 2024. Of companies that don’t use video, 68% intend to start this year. (Source)
Over the past decade, video marketing campaigns have been trending upward. In 2016, just 61% of companies invested in video creation. By 2018, the percentage had skyrocketed to 81%.
Of marketers who haven’t used video, 30% say they don’t have time to create video content, 10% can’t convince decision-makers to invest, and 18% don’t know where to start.
However, consumers want video content. 44% of consumers say they’d rather watch a short video – such as a tutorial, product demonstration, explainer, or testimonial – than read a text-based article, receive a sales call, or watch a sales pitch.
2. Interest in the search term ‘AI video marketing’ peaked in February 2024 with the announcement of OpenAI’s Sora. (Source)
Survey data indicates that 75% of marketers have used artificial intelligence (AI) to create or edit videos. They will choose some AI video editors with advanced AI features to make the process easier.
Additionally, Google Trends data shows increased queries for the search terms “AI video marketing” and “AI video.” This indicates that the general public as well as marketing professionals have caught on to AI as a video production tool.
Interest took off as AI video has made headlines due to technological breakthroughs, ethical and existential concerns, and the SAG-AFTRA strike that lasted from July to November 2023. In the strike, actors named the use of AI in film and TV as a top complaint.
Queries for both search terms peaked in February 2023, the week OpenAI announced its text-to-video model Sora. We wrote an in-depth look into how Sora’s amazing technology works.
This indicates that generative AI is capturing global attention in a way that other emerging technologies, which we’ll cover later in this list, have been slow to do.
3. Global searches for TikTok began a downward trend in September 2023 – but more marketers are adopting the platform (Source)
TikTok was the top-earning app in the world for the third straight month in February 2024, earning $189 million in revenue. Meanwhile, YouTube was in second place with $111 million.
Additionally, the 2024 Wyzowl report reveals that 69% of marketers have started using TikTok, compared to just 35% in their report the year before.
However, TikTok may be showing early signs of decline.
Global interest in the search term “TikTok” hit a five-year peak at the beginning of September 2023, but then began a downward trend similar to the path Facebook took over a decade ago.
For comparison, queries for the search term “Facebook” peaked in July 2013 before dropping 46% over the following two years. Facebook has continued its downward trend, sitting at just 9% of its peak as of March 2024.
However, the United States is a notable exception to TikTok’s lost gains, as searches for the app skyrocketed in March 2024 following news that the country may ban the video sharing platform.
None of this means TikTok will fade away in the near future. There is revenue to be made on the platform, but it can be difficult for creators to earn a living directly from TikTok.
How much can you make through TikTok?
According to the latest industry data from 2023, the average salary for a TikTok influencer was $121,765, but 48% earned less than $15,000.
The Creator Fund will pay creators $.02 to $.04 for every 1,000 views. That means a creator would have to have 1 million views to earn $20-$40. To be eligible to earn anything, creators must have a minimum of 10,000 followers and at least 100,000 views over the past 30 days.
This is a high barrier to entry for individuals and smaller organizations that would leverage TikTok as a video marketing platform.
One avenue for earning significant revenue on TikTok is affiliate marketing. For example, influencer Alex Ojeda has 8.4 million followers and charges $20,000 for a branded video.
Likewise, creators can receive “gifts” from followers on TikTok LIVE and exchange them for real money. TikTok LIVE is the app’s live-streaming platform. In 2023, creator PinkyDoll was making $7,000 per day through gifts, earning $1,000 to $2,000 per stream. Meanwhile, TikToker Jakey Boehm earns income from his 1.2 million followers by going live while sleeping.
4. Video marketers are changing their SEO strategy because certain thumbnails no longer show up in the SERPs (Source)
Google has simplified video presentation in search engine results pages (SERPs).
Previously, video thumbnails would appear with search results if there was a video on the page, regardless of whether it was central to the page. Following the change, thumbnails only appear if the video is the main content of the page.
Google says this will allow users to know better what to expect when they click on a link, improving search intent.
The Google announcement said this had minimal impact on engagement. However, this change affects search appearance metrics in the performance report in the Search Console, the video indexing report, and rich result reports.
Marketers who publish video-centric blog content or other video content that relies on ranking high in search results may benefit from updating their knowledge of Google’s video SEO optimization best practices.
5. Short-form video is becoming increasingly important as more people join social media platforms and bite-sized dramas find an audience (Source)
The number of social media users in America has increased from 292.51 million in 2020 to 320.6 million in 2024, representing 85% of the U.S. population. By 2029, that number is expected to reach 342.6 million.
This means platforms that favor short-form videos, like LinkedIn, Instagram, TikTok, X (formerly Twitter), and Snapchat will be increasingly valuable targets for marketing efforts.
Globally, 94% of internet users also use social media. As of January 2024, that’s 5.35 billion people online and 5.04 billion people on social media, watching all types of videos including video ads, shoppable videos, product demos, and social media stories.
Short-form narrative videos saw a wave of interest in 2023.
ReelShort is a video streaming service that specializes in bite-sized, serialized dramas intended to be watched on mobile. It follows Dreamworks’ short-lived subscription service Quibi, which experimented with a similar format in 2020.
ReelShort earns an average of $2 per download, compared to Quibi’s $73.
The China-based app saw massive early popularity in its home country, but the US has grown to become its largest market. The app was downloaded 24 million times in Q4 2023, and nearly a third of those downloads were in the US.
By comparison, Quibi was downloaded only 10 million times before it shut down.
According to Google Trends, worldwide searches for the keyword “ReelShort” trended upward following its August 2022 release, reaching a staggering peak in the final week of December 2023, but the rate of searches has fallen by two-thirds since.
Regardless, the expanding presence of short videos designed for mobile gives companies an incentive to further invest in short-form content marketing. For more, see our deep dive into RealShort and trends in short-form content.
6. Marketers are investing in long-form video and rank YouTube as more effective than short-form video channels (Source)
For two years in a row, 78% of marketers said YouTube is an effective video marketing channel, more than any other platform. (To see more useful tips for publishing videos on YouTube: Trending YouTube Shorts Hashtags)
While the percentage of marketers that say the same about short-form video platforms like TikTok, Facebook, X (Twitter), and Snapchat have increased since last year, YouTube is still the king – even if Facebook beats the video-sharing platform in monthly active users.
In fact, the 2024 Wyzowl report suggests YouTube is more effective than any other video marketing channel, including webinars, interactive video, 360 video, 3D video or augmented reality (AR), and virtual reality (VR).
According to the most recent data from 2023, 30% of content creators of all income levels who monetize their work say TikTok is the top platform for generating revenue. This is followed by YouTube at 25.8%, Facebook at 16.5%, X (Twitter) at 13.1%, and Instagram at 7.1%.
However, these rankings change among higher earners. Of content creators who earn more than $200,000 in annual income, 28.6% say YouTube is their primary channel of revenue.
Rounding out the top five are TikTok with 21.9%, X (Twitter) with 15.1%, Facebook with 14.3%, and Instagram with 10.1%.
Not only are content creators generating revenue on YouTube, but the platform is raking in a fortune through ads. Worldwide advertising revenues for YouTube reached a record $31.5 billion in 2023, up from $8.15 billion in 2017.
While all social platforms support video, only YouTube is specifically dedicated to long-form video content – even though it also hosts YouTube Shorts.
For example, LinkedIn was ranked the second-most effective video marketing channel in Wyzowl’s 2023 report but fell to seventh place in the 2024 report. LinkedIn supports long-form videos, but short-form user-generated content (UGC) is more prevalent on the platform.
10 minutes is the informal cutoff time for long-form videos on LinkedIn, and the platform suggests keeping videos under 30 seconds for brand awareness and brand consideration videos.
Long-form content offers greater freedom for video content creators, and YouTube’s long-form format encourages users to put on a pair of headphones and watch with sound.
7. Live streaming has been slow to catch on, as only 36% of marketers had posted live video content as of 2023 (Source)
While 64% of marketers had never published live video content, according to the most recent data from 2023, now may not be the time to invest in live streaming.
A 2024 report showed a spike in the use of Facebook Live, with 68% of surveyed marketers saying they had used the platform. By comparison, only 26% of marketers said they planned to use it in the 2022 report just two years earlier. However, the most recent survey shows only 57% of marketers say Facebook Live is an effective channel.
Live streaming gained mainstream popularity with Twitch in 2011, and YouTube adopted the feature two years later. Facebook followed in 2015, and Instagram followed a year after that.
Google Trends shows spikes in queries for the search term “live streaming” that correlate with each launch, with the biggest spike coinciding with Facebook Live, more than doubling the popularity of the search term.
However, searches have been steadily declining since September 2018, and today searches for the term are nearly as low as they’ve been since 2009.
While this doesn’t mean there’s no value in producing video in real-time, marketers may want to consider these factors before including them in their video marketing strategy.
8. 360 video, interactive video, and virtual reality have given marketers new tools – and they’re catching on (Source)
Since 2022, there have been some interesting shake-ups in which video channels marketers are using. While the top five (YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and webinars) have stayed mostly the same, their order has shuffled and most have seen massive increases in adoption among marketers.
However, the true star is emerging technologies, most of which have seen a massive spike in use over the past year after remaining relatively ignored in 2022 and 2023.
Here’s how adoption of the leading video marketing channels changed from 2022 to 2024:
- YouTube has slightly increased from 88% to 90%.
- Facebook rose to take second place, increasing from 65% to 86%.
- Instagram climbed from 68% to 79%.
- LinkedIn dropped from second place to fourth, even though the percentage of marketers who used the platform increased from 68% to 76%.
- Webinars grew impressively from 46% to 70%.
- X (Twitter) saw a massive increase from 29% to 69%.
- TikTok more than doubled from 33% to 69%.
- Facebook Live seemed to finally find its place after launching in 2015, rising from 26% to 68%.
- Interactive video roughly quadrupled, growing from 17% to 65%.
- 360 video has shot up in the past year, growing from 10% in 2022, to just 17% in 2023, and then 56% in 2024.
- Snapchat has skyrocketed from 6% in 2022, to just 13% in 2023, up to 57% in 2024.
- Virtual reality (VR) shot up 14% to 56%.
- 3D video is the only channel that disappeared from the list. In 2023, 10% of marketers said they’d used it.
While 360 video, 3D video, augmented reality (AR), and virtual reality saw massive increase in popularity among marketers, Google Trends indicates they still haven’t caught on with the general public.
9. People spend more time watching videos on digital devices every year, and less time watching TV (Source)
The average number of minutes American adults spend watching online video content per day has grown every year since at least 2019, and projections indicate this will continue.
Meanwhile, the average number of minutes spent watching TV has decreased at nearly the same rate over those years, and that pattern is also expected to continue.
In the study, TV includes traditional live television as well as time-shifted viewing and services that allow users to stream TV online. Digital video includes video content streamed on mobile phones, tablets, desktop computers, laptops, or connected TVs. This excluded social video.
In 2019, Americans spent 190 minutes watching TV per day and 113 minutes watching video content on digital devices. Projections for 2027 indicate Americans giving digital video devices 204 minutes of their attention each day while giving TV only 121 minutes.
This shows the increasingly loose grip traditional TV has on American viewers, and indicates that other video marketing channels have more room for expansion.
10. A rising percentage of marketers say a video content strategy gives them a good ROI – increasing leads, sales, traffic, and website dwell time (Source)
In 2024, 90% of marketers say video content gives them a good return on investment (ROI), compared to just 76% in 2016.
Marketers quantify ROI with a variety of metrics, with 60% of marketers looking at engagement such as likes, shares and reposts. However, these are vanity metrics, and it’s more important to measure ROI based on how the videos improve your bottom line.
Here are the other metrics considered by marketers when measuring ROI:
- Customer engagement and retention - 42%
- Video views - 40%
- Brand awareness and PR - 39%
- Sales - 32%
- Leads and clicks - 28%
Let’s take a closer look at video ROI metrics:
- Increased sales - 87% of marketers say video content has increased conversion rates, an all-time high. This is a massive increase from 2016, when only 64% of marketers said video increased sales.
- Brand awareness - This percentage remains strong with 90% of marketers saying video has increased brand awareness compared to 93% in 2022.
- Lead generation - This percentage has improved from 81% in 2019 to 87% in 2024.
- User understanding - 88% of marketers say video helps users better understand their products or services, up from 80% in 2015.
- Increased website traffic - 86% of respondents said video marketing increased web traffic, up from 55% in 2015.
- Dwell time - The percentage of marketers who say video has helped keep visitors on their website longer has increased from 80% in 2018 to 82% in 2024. However, 2023 saw a spike to 87%.
- Reduced support inquiries - There has been a massive increase in marketers who say video content has reduced support inquiries from users, growing from 30% in 2015 to 66% in 2024.
What These Video Marketing Trends Show Us
Video marketing content continues to grow as a powerful tool for companies to increase sales and reach new customers.
To stay competitive in video marketing, remember these key takeaways when creating content:
01of 06Consider all the platforms available to you
YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn might be the heavy hitters, but webinars, interactive video, 360 video, and virtual reality are fast-growing channels. Where is your target audience, and where might they be a year from now?
02of 06Invest in both long-form and short-form video content
Both formats are becoming increasingly powerful in video marketing. Long-form content works best on YouTube, while all other social media platforms favor short-form content. What does your content need to convey? Can your message be told quickly and without sound?
03of 06When creating short-form content
Keep videos between 30 to 60 seconds, use a vertical video format, and add subtitles or use visual storytelling so the video can be watched without sound.
04of 06Watch for ways your videos can be adapted to multiple platforms
TikTok can be repurposed as Instagram Reels, Instagram Stories, or YouTube Shorts, or vice versa, to reach multiple audiences and maximize ROI.
05of 06When producing long-form content
Remember that Google has changed how it ranks video results. If your blog post contains a video but is not video-centric, it won’t appear as a thumbnail in the SERPs. If you want users to click on your video content, keep it the star of the page.
06of 06Leverage generative AI tools
For quick text-to-video content that looks great while being easy and cost-effective to produce, use AI tools. You don’t necessarily need to hire actors, voiceover artists, license music, and recruit other professionals for your video. It can be created using AI, narrated by an AI-generated voice, scored by AI, and edited with AI-driven software.
In the coming years, it will be exciting to see how new technology and the changing social media landscape will continue to impact digital marketing and the ways brands interact with customers.
Filmora can help you create high-quality and effective video content, achieve your marketing objectives, and maximize ROI. To discover how Filmora can help you, please see our FAQ or contact us.
