As the new year begins, PerformanceIN continues its annual tradition of connecting with performance marketing experts to get their single biggest prediction for the industry in 2017.
In this piece, Dror Ginzberg, co-founder & CEO at Wochit, explains which video trends will be game-changing in 2017.
As we saw, 2016 was the year of online video. The main social media platforms, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Snapchat, really put video content at the heart of all their strategies. From Facebook Live’s release in April, to Twitter’s extension of its video character limit, to Instagram’s launch of disappearing videos, each platform has sought to innovate and perfect its video offering, especially as online video now accounts for over two-thirds of all internet traffic, and is expected to jump to an unprecedented 82% by 2020.
Next year, such video-focused innovations will continue among the most popular social media platforms. With online video now so critical, its proportion of web traffic will only keep increasing into 2017 and all the main social media players will be seeking ways to interest and excite their users, while keeping a close eye on what their competitors are up to.
If this past month was any indication of how social video will be consumed in the year ahead, Facebook will lead the charge. Somewhat surprisingly, the social media platform has fragmented the once unrivalled viewership figures of Youtube. This festive season 90% of all interactions, and 60% of Christmas TV adverts posted on social were via Facebook, while under 40% of views were on Youtube. For 2017 the fragmentation of social video will continue to tilt in favour of those at the forefront of innovation, and if Youtube doesn’t respond to Facebook’s growing lead the platform could soon lose relevance.
Another game-changer for 2017 could be more immersive video. As publishers and video content creators look to captivate their increasing audiences, the perspective of video will play a great part – as evidenced by the release of the hotly demanded Snap Spectacles and VR gaming.
These two forms of video immersion are yet to take hold, but as 2017 dawns and video creation platforms begin to harness the power of the immersive perspective, we can expect to see video packages emerge that are captivating beyond compare.