By Ian Mullins

Video is everywhere you look. It is used for entertainment, information, instruction, commentary, social interaction and marketing. The success of video can be seen by just taking a look at Google’s YouTube.

YouTube is the biggest video sharing Web site, the second-largest search engine after Google and the third-most visited Web site in the world, with more than 100 hours of video being uploaded to the site every minute.

With video continuing its unstoppable rise, it is time for marketers to take advantage of this trend.

Spot on
It is only recently that marketers are beginning to realize the potential that video has for branding opportunities.

Video is a lot more engaging than static content, resonates in the users’ minds for longer and, quite frankly, is just a lot more entertaining.

For branded video content to have an effect, content needs to be short and memorable.

A video can provide a lot more information than a simple text or an image.

For the most part, video content is a lot more effective in engaging and sparking interest in a consumer.

Eighty percent of online visitors will watch a video in its entirety compared to 20 percent who will read content all the way through.

The length of a video will also make a difference, especially when being watched on a mobile device, where screens are smaller.

Forty-five percent of the time, people are watching videos which are 6 minutes long or less. The shorter the video the better. And video is not solely a means of entertainment. It provides a ton more information and is a lot more likely to create engagement.

In a survey of 1,000 British adults, it was found that 56 percent of consumers were more prone to ‘like’ a post and nearly 40 percent were more likely to share video content, meaning that video will have a lot more potential to go viral.

Marketing channel
Taking into consideration the research in favor for video, any savvy marketer would be foolish to ignore the importance of video content.

If you couple the popularity of video with the soaring usage of smartphones, marketers should realize the benefits of mobile video as a marketing channel.

Research has shown that mobile video views have increased a massive 400 percent in the past two years, doubling in the last year alone.

Twenty-five percent of all video is now being watched from a mobile device. We can expect this figure to rise even more due to the soaring popularity of this medium.

By 2018, video could potentially account for 69 percent of all consumer Internet traffic, as predicted by Cisco Systems.

Mobile video should now be the go-to platform for marketers and advertisers alike – who need to realize that video content should not just be Netflix and cute animal videos.

Most have already cottoned on to the benefits of video – with 70 percent of marketers now using video in their advertising. The remaining 30 percent are clearly missing a trick.

Many companies have now embraced video sharing Web sites, such as Vine and Vimeo, using these sites to advertise and promote their product.

Even Netflix, the largest on-demand streaming service, is considering the addition of 2- to 5-minute-long video clips to cater to the increasing amounts of users viewing mobile video.

YouTube announced at the beginning of 2014 that 40 percent of its traffic comes from mobile.

IT IS CLEAR that a mobile video marketing strategy would likely increase brand awareness and create a positive image, and is a strategy too beneficial to ignore.

As tablet and smartphone penetration increases – the brand new iPhone 6 sold a whopping 10 million in the opening weekend – so too will mobile video viewing.

The advertising and mobile industry is constantly evolving to meet the needs of consumers. With video views ever increasing, video is certainly on track to dominate the mobile landscape.

Let us face it, as Cisco Systems has predicted, ignore mobile video and you will be missing out on a huge 69 percent of mobile traffic.

Ian Mullins is CEO of AdSpruce, London. Reach him at [email protected].