Why Vertical Video is The Future of Video Marketing

Andre Oentoro

November 13, 2018

In the past few years, smartphone manufacturers have been improving their product quality rapidly, especially in the camera department. Today’s flagship smartphones can capture images and record videos with comparable quality to some entry-level DSLRs.

In addition to that, the displays on smartphones are high-quality so watching movies on the go is no longer a pain in the eyes. These two factors alone are enough to change the way we consume and create content.

If you’ve been browsing the internet long enough, you must have come across a YouTube video that gets bashed a lot for being vertically filmed. Even as recent as 2016, a Reddit thread that bashes vertical filming still gets a whopping 4,500 karma (upvotes).

Does this mean that vertical videos are still an abomination for the internet? No, it doesn’t.

The main factor why vertical videos were treated as such is because most people were still relying on their PC or laptop to watch online videos. A Statista report predicts that the number of mobile video viewers is gradually increasing since 2014, with biggest jumps predicted to occur in 2018 and 2019.

In addition to this, the rapid growth of social media platforms, which encourages vertical content such as Instagram, Facebook, and Snapchat, are the main reason brands are flipping their camera and creating vertical videos to add into their content library. Even YouTube is gradually making changes to their mobile apps and websites to cater to vertical videos.

Another reason why vertical video is gaining popularity is its immersiveness for mobile users. When you watch a 30-minute episode of The Big Bang Theory, turning your phone sideways is somewhat tolerable. But when you’re watching a series of 1-minute cat videos, turning your phone back and forth is a little annoying, right?

How Does Vertical Video Fit Into A Marketing Strategy?

A great marketing strategy should be fluid, meaning it should evolve along with its target market. When your target market is changing their day-to-day activity, you can’t keep insisting on reaching them through the same old channels.

Let’s face it: Social media is possibly the best way to reach most companies’ target market — mainly because everyone has a social media profile and, therefore, is more reachable. Majority of social media users do their sharing, commenting and news feed-scrolling from their smartphones. In July 2018, Facebook got 168 millions of active mobile users in the US — that’s roughly 50% of Americans.

By creating vertical videos, you improve their experience with your brand by applying immersiveness to your video marketing as opposed to intrusiveness (like most marketing activities).

Breadnbeyond has created an infographic that contains necessary information about why vertical videos are the future of marketing and how you can apply it to your company’s marketing strategy. Check it out.

Andre Oentoro

Andre Oentoro is the founder of Breadnbeyond, an award winning explainer video company. He helps business increase conversion rates, close more sales and get positive ROI from explainer videos (in that order).