Mobile video marketing trends: what’s in store for 2022?

Summary

Mobile video marketing has now become an essential element in the marketing strategies of companies of all industries and sizes. Organizations that use mobile video marketing achieve higher click-through rates and higher conversion and customer retention rates. It’s a well-established reality that involves not only technological advancements but also human and social aspects. Therefore, to identify the mobile marketing trends of the immediate future, we must take into account how new circumstances – the new normal – have helped shape the contemporary mobile environment.

The influence of mobile devices

You are on the subway, still a little sleepy from the morning wake-up call and trying to stay alert, despite the gentle rocking of the subway car inviting you to close your eyes, even if only for a few seconds. Or maybe you’re in the waiting room at the dentist and anxiously awaiting diagnosis about the cause of that suspicious little pain you’ve been feeling for a few days. Or perhaps you’re taking advantage of a coffee break to catch your breath during a particularly stressful day at work. In all of these situations, if you look around, you will almost certainly see people with their eyes glued to the screen of their cell phone. Those people, in all likelihood, are watching a video.

In fact, over 75% of all video is now played on mobile devices (Source: eMarketer).

The reasons behind the success of mobile video are numerous and the space available here is not enough to cover them all extensively.

However, if we only look at the last few years, we can see how the combination of three events is shaping current mobile video marketing trends and contributing significantly to the increase in video consumption on mobile devices: the affirmation of fast mobile internet as the prevailing standard and the development of 5G infrastructure, with the implementation of new features, such as:

• High speed data delivery
• 4K video streaming
• HD augmented reality
• HD Virtual Reality

5G also promises to offer better targeting options. As more and more devices are connected, the amount of data that can be accessed will inevitably increase and the level of personalization allowed will also increase:

• the impact of the coronavirus pandemic: according to a study by Statista.com, during the fourth quarter of 2020, time spent watching entertainment videos via smartphones grew 37% year over year, a sign that mobile video consumption has remained strong even after the first wave. We can say with relative confidence that the long periods of social distancing have only dramatically accelerated a trend that was already in place, and that companies have been trying to use to their advantage for years.

Mobile devices: a preferred access point for businesses

In many markets, smartphones are now a preferred entry point to the customer journey and are used much more frequently than other devices, including for viewing video. According to Wyzowl, the vast majority of consumers (90%) prefer to watch videos on their cell phones rather than on desktops.

From a brand perspective, 59% of executive marketers agree that if there is only static text or a combination of text and images, or video content on the same topic, people are more likely to prefer video (Source: smallbiztrend.com). Among other things, videos have some technical and narrative characteristics that make them particularly suitable for sharing, and this is why they are increasingly used within social marketing strategies.

Before we go into detail about the trends we can expect in 2022, let’s stop for a moment: how does mobile marketing work? What is mobile video marketing? Why is mobile video marketing proving to be so central to companies’ marketing plans?

How does mobile marketing work?

Mobile marketing uses mobile devices, smartphones, and tablets to market a business or product or to provide information about a company. It’s a mode of content delivery that allows users to receive ads and messages even while on the go, right when they need them, “in the right place at the right time”. This ubiquity makes mobile marketing extremely effective for:

• communicating with customers wherever they are;
• reaching even very large but also highly profiled customer bases.

Video as a fundamental resource of marketing strategies

Video marketing is not only used to promote and market products or services, it’s also used to increase engagement on a brand’s digital and social channels and to maintain a relationship with consumers and customers by designing content that is useful to them and delivered in the most appropriate circumstances.

Content marketing – and video marketing in particular – should have a dedicated place within any organization’s digital tool optimization strategy. That’s because video content converts more than any other form of content: including video on a landing page, for example, can increase conversion by 80% (Source: insivia.com).

The emergence of video as a central asset within companies’ marketing plans has been made possible by a fundamental shift in the way marketers think about video in general. For a few years now, according to Hubspot, video has stopped being considered just one tactical asset among many to be considered a business strategy in its own right:

“The last handful of years saw a surge in the popularity of video as a content marketing format. Specifically, in 2017, video rose to the top of your marketing tactic list. Video as a tactic was likely streamlined by your creative team as a one-to-many awareness play, with lots of focus on expensive production and little analysis to show for it. 2018 and 2019 transformed video from a singular marketing tactic to an entire business strategy. Today, video is a holistic business approach, meaning video content should be produced by all teams in a conversational, actionable, and measurable way” (Source: Hubspot).

All the mobile video marketing trends: the imperative is to create engagement

From a marketing perspective, video is becoming faster and more cost-effective to implement, especially if you rely on automated video companies. They continue to represent a reassuring certainty for marketers around the world. Cisco predicts that by 2022, more than 82% of online consumer traffic will be in video format.

While the popularity of video content is growing year on year, the popularity of mobile video is skyrocketing. Just two years ago, 63% of all mobile traffic was video, and by 2025 that number will grow to nearly 76% (Source: Ericsson Mobility Report). The power of video lies in its being extremely engaging. According to Facebook, video is able to maintain a connection with the user longer than other types of content, even five times longer than static images. This ability to capture the attention of increasingly elusive users makes video incredibly powerful tools.

Before videos can be used, marketers need to choose the right platform(s) to publish them. In this sense, social media and social apps play an essential role in boosting video content. After all, some of the most popular social networks in the world today are video-based (e.g., TikTok) or, for that matter, visual content-based (Instagram, Snapchat, etc.), and they’ve been experimenting with new formats for years now, which have been enriched with interactive and dynamic features over time. Let’s see which ones.

1. Shoppable video ads

One of the most recent mobile video marketing trends is shoppable video ads, which are already used by 40% of marketers on various platforms, from Instagram to Amazon to YouTube, according to Marketingdive.

Shoppable video ads represent the frontier of social commerce, and they can reference a wide variety of content, such as interactive fashion runways, influencer videos, etc. They allow you to reach viewers wherever they are and offer more than just a visual experience because they facilitate conversion and purchase. They represent a connection opportunity that simply can’t be overlooked, and in fact, all major apps already support them (Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, Snapchat).

2. User generated content

The pandemic seems to have exacerbated a pre-existing trust crisis that came about with the mass deployment of digital tools, when within just a few years, one-to-many broadcasting shifted to a more conversational space. On the other hand, according to the 2020 Edelman Trust Barometer Report, trust is the second most important factor driving the decision to buy from a new brand (53%) or the decision to become a loyal customer (49%), right behind price and accessibility.

To overcome consumer skepticism of online platforms and sponsored ads, brands have had to bite the bullet and begin to tap into user-generated content (UGC). In fact, consumers are 2.4 times more likely to perceive UGC as authentic than brand-created content. To fully leverage these resources, marketers had to learn how to use them without betraying their apparent spontaneity.

While video production and sharing capabilities are by no means new, the rise in popularity of TikTok in recent years has forced traditional social media platforms to adopt a more dynamic and social video format that is optimized for mobile use. Some of these videos last only a few seconds: they are fragments, very quick communications that manage to summarize the main points of the message in a way that is understandable and easy to share. For all of these reasons, between 2020 and 2021, user-generated short videos have become the norm for social media platforms (Instagram Reels, YouTube Shorts and Pinterest’s Pin Idea).

In 2022, brands will be able to rely on an increasing amount of user-generated content, which is deemed more trustworthy and recognizable.

3. Live streaming

Streaming video makes it possible to establish a unique sense of connection with brands and other people, even under exceptionally discontinuous operating conditions. We’ve seen this in the last couple of years, when more and more people have had to work remotely. But live streaming video isn’t just an asset in times of emergency.

Even in situations of newfound normality, their ability to reach a diverse and more qualified audience remains intact. Especially among younger generations, one of the most promising mobile video marketing trends is the one that considers social networks like TikTok and Snapchat as direct competitors of streaming services. The difference with traditional streaming services is that these apps provide user-generated short-form video content.

4. No audio

Many users enjoy mobile content when they’re in public places, which means they often prefer to watch videos without hearing the audio (or are forced to mute their phones). That’s why Facebook and Instagram have introduced a preset automatic mute feature. In the immediate future, brands will therefore need to design and produce content with the lack of sound in mind, for example by providing accurate subtitles with visual sequences by default.

5. Gamification

Gamification is now recognized as an extremely versatile and effective marketing tactic. Humans are programmed to memorize and learn more easily if they have fun while doing so. This is why brands have begun incorporating playful elements into their digital communications. One of the most innovative and engaging forms that gamification can take is mobile video.

Mobile and interactive videos, which are set to the pattern of games, work through sets of instructions that appear on the screen and invite the audience to interact. Users are thus guided through a path of trials, rewards, and penalties. There are many possible narrative types that can be used in mobile video games. Here we name the two most common:

• launching a challenge that requires an immediate response: in this case the player, in order to advance the video, must move in the competitive environment created by the brand by scrolling the arrows before the time runs out.
• interactive videos can be articulated in real branches: where the user must decide which direction to take: his choice will influence the way the story unfolds in the rest of the video.

6. Personalization

The last mobile video marketing trend on this list (but certainly not the least important) is personalization, which is expressed in increasingly advanced features.

In a single day, while using our cell phone (for example on the subway, waiting at the dentist’s office or in front of the coffee machine, as we said at the beginning of this post) we are exposed to dozens or even hundreds of messages. These messages will be much more likely to get our attention if they mean something to us on a personal level. And, in order to create personalized content, marketers rely on data. Only by analyzing the data that describes our behavior as users – including through the analysis of qualitative information such as feedback – can they get to know us and reach us with the right content.

All of the mobile video marketing trends we’ve mentioned so far need to be integrated into a solid organic and paid strategy. Only in this way will brands be able to hit their goals: increase leads, drive web traffic and maximize sales.