2024 B2B Marketing Trend Predictions: Video Still Dominates

It’s time for another installment in our 2024 Marketing trends series! If you’re behind the times, no worries, you can get caught up now. In our previous posts we talked about AI and First-Party Data. And if you can’t wait to learn about the rest, click here to get your very own copy of the full report for free.

Now, on to Trend 3. No surprise—it’s all about video.

Trend #3: Video is Still Totally Dominating

Video killed the radio star. And video advertising keeps coming for everything else that’s left. We’ve witnessed this trend first-hand in our work with our clients. Our video versus static ad testing shows video comes out on top with the strongest performance and highest engagement with content on our web experiences across application and industries.

Short-form video content is the name of the game following the rise in popularity of this content in apps like:

• TikTok with over 1B active monthly users
• YouTube with over 2B monthly active users interacting with Shorts
• Instagram with over 2.35B monthly active users interacting with Reels
• Facebook with over 4B video views taking place in the platform every day

By the end of this year alone the average person is expected to spend 100 minutes every day watching online videos.

Tips for Embracing Video to the Fullest

1.  Vertical Video is Here to Stay: As more people consume video on mobile devices, vertical video has become increasingly important as a more user-friendly format and immersive viewing experience. A recent study from Instagram found that 70% of millennials don’t turn their phone horizontally to watch videos. Don’t give users a reason to scroll past your content.
2. Go Live: While we expect to see increased application of personalized video content, we acknowledge that B2B marketing has a lot of learning to do with AI before we will be prepared to deliver personalized video at scale. But that doesn’t mean we can’t engage with customers in more meaningful ways like “going live”. Live streaming has over a quarter of internet users’ attention on a weekly basis and this format allows brands to interact more with their brand fans in real time.
3. Consider 360° Video: 360° video is a great way for brands to move towards more engaging content without a lot of technological burden being placed on their users. While 360° is BEST experienced in VR technology, it’s available to anyone with a smart phone. With the 360° camera market expected to reach $4.34 Billion this content is only expected to become more popular.
4.  Be Caption-Cautious: Silent video is becoming an even more increasingly popular format for video consumption. Make sure you close-caption your content. And while you can let machines auto-generate those captions for you, please check them! Human written captions are more accurate and necessary for the silent viewers.
5. Make the Most of Your Video Budget: It’s not the cheapest content format out there, but its performance speaks for itself. Plan ahead to maximize the content you can create for the budget you have—whether you’re engaging production companies or planning your shot list for your next cellphone video shoot.

Explore the Rest of the Trends

Trend #1: Obviously It’s AI, Right? Obviously.
Trend #2: It’s the First-Party Data Party!
Trend #4: Personalized Content: It’s Here to Stay.
Trend #5: More Marketing Forecasting, Please!

We love music here at Simantel, so you might notice some pop song lyrics sprinkled throughout the report. Did you catch the one in this trend? It’s Video Killed the Radio Star by The Buggles.