How Will Social Media Videos Change In 2018?

Let’s face it, the internet has changed dramatically in the past decade from a primarily text-based medium to the new television, accounting for almost 70% of all traffic in 2017 alone. I have no doubt that 2018 will be another breakthrough year for video, especially on social media – and as a marketer, you need to be on top of trends in order to keep surfing the wave of success and stay in front of potential leads.

One of the biggest changes is likely to be one that kowtows to ever-decreasing attention spans. Big companies are already experimenting with 6-second ads, and these are a powerful way to quickly grab attention and shove people to do something.

If you’ve experimented with YouTube ads, you’ll already be familiar with the fact that these can often be in the midroll (i.e. the middle of videos rather than bracketing them). This is a smart place to put those ads, as visitors are already engaged with the content. However, the big news is that Facebook is already thinking of rolling this out… that’s big news indeed, and one that has enormous implications. Keep an eye on this!

The final change is likely to revolve around another big driver of change in 2017: personalization. The technology is getting to a point where hyper-targeting is a real possibility, and video marketing is likely to follow suit. While 2018 is unlikely to be a year you can start really leveraging this, it will be a great year to see how big companies with big budgets leverage this for great ideas.

All in all, video marketing is set to continue its big bang in 2018, and with 5G being introduced during the February Pyeongchang Olympic Winter Games, it’s likely that new wireless tech will drive even more change.

Stay tuned… big changes are coming!