Everyday you hear news about social media growing as a platform for video, and you read about the rise in video consumption amongst millennials. The head of operations at Facebook says that Facebook will be all video in just 5 years time. Snapchat is now worth almost $20 billion, and advertisers are spending on average more than $10 million annually on video.
So what’s the big deal? Why is video so popular and why are we consuming so much of it?
Well as a college student in her twenties, I can only tell you from my perspective why I think my generation loves video.
If I am going to a concert with my friends, why would I document the night with pictures when I could relive every moment through video? I want to be able to listen to the music and hear the crowd singing along to the words even after the night is over.
With a picture you can tell a story, but with a video you can live the story.
It’s live, it’s fun and it’s more engaging. It has the ability to transport you into the moment. With video you are no longer just looking at the scene, but you become a part of it.
That’s why new apps like Instagram’s Boomerang, which allows you to create mini videos that loop back and forth, are becoming increasingly popular. It’s a split second, but it’s still movement and it’s LIVE.
People want more than just a picture, because we have more to say than the “one thousand words” a picture is worth.
We want to say a billion words with video. And maybe that’s why together we make up 8 billion views of video on Facebook daily, or why snapchat users watch 6 billion videos every day. Especially as consumers, we want to be shown exactly what we want and why we should want it.
That is why video advertising is so powerful.
I am scrolling through my Instagram feed and I just stumble upon a native ad for Velveeta that auto-plays a how-to recipe for their Easy Chicken Campfire Packs.
I don’t know what an “easy chicken campfire pack” is, but I’m hungry and it looks good. Even better, Velveeta is showing me with this short video how I can easily make their product right now! Instead of just an annoying pop-up picture of Velveeta cheese or the Easy Chicken Campfire Pack, I have now consumed a video that told me how I can instantly purchase this product and why I want to.
Hungrily sitting on my phone an hour before lunch, I can honestly tell you that this video has made me positively respond to Velveeta’s ad.
With video, advertising is becoming more clever and more interesting. It is constantly changing based on how we, the consumers, want to see advertisements. And what we want is an instant, fun and engaging message about a product that shows us what we want and why we want it.
And that is video.
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