The Future of Video-Based Social Media: Trends to Watch in 2024 & Beyond

Over the past decade, video has exploded in popularity to become the most compelling format for storytelling and audience engagement on social media. Cisco projects that by 2022, video will account for 82% of all internet traffic. For marketers, video has proven to deliver the highest ROI of any content type. Over 85% of businesses now use video as a marketing tool, and 92% say it‘s an important part of their strategy.

As we look ahead to 2024 and beyond, all signs point to video continuing its rapid growth and transformation of the social media landscape. Social platforms are heavily prioritizing video in their features and algorithms. Brands are investing more than ever in social video production and advertising. New video-centric platforms are emerging to challenge the dominance of YouTube and Facebook.

Here‘s a closer look at some of the key trends that will shape the future of social media video:

Video Will Dominate the Social Media Experience

If video is already ubiquitous on social media today, expect it to become downright inescapable in the years to come. Humans are inherently visual creatures, and video allows brands to tell richer, more emotionally resonant stories than text or static images alone. Studies show that viewers retain 95% of a message when they watch it in a video, compared to just 10% when reading it in text.

As a result, social algorithms are increasingly prioritizing video content, as it drives the highest engagement rates and watch times. By 2024, it‘s conceivable that the default content format on social feeds will shift from text/photo to video. Live streaming, Stories-style short-form videos, and long-form premium video series will all become more central to the user experience.

For brands, this means that a robust social video strategy will become table stakes. Marketers will need to build their skills in video production, editing, and optimization. We‘ll see increased investment in high-quality video assets, as brands compete for attention in an all-video world. Social-first formats like vertical video will be paramount. Silent autoplay will give way to immersive, sound-on experiences as video overtakes the feed.

Heated Competition Among Video Platforms

While Facebook (including Instagram) and YouTube are currently the dominant social video platforms, their leadership position will face threats on multiple fronts. Legacy social networks are heavily prioritizing video to keep users engaged and fend off upstarts. Snapchat repositioned as a "camera company" and continues to innovate with AR video filters. Twitter has made aggressive moves into live streaming video. LinkedIn and Pinterest have launched native video offerings.

But the real earthquake is the meteoric rise of TikTok, which has amassed over 800 million active users with its addictive, AI-curated feed of short video clips. TikTok‘s popularity with Gen Z points to a future where social entertainment is driven by bite-sized, personalized video content. Instagram has already responded with the launch of its TikTok clone, Reels.

The next few years will bring heated competition to control the social video experience. The major platforms will battle to keep users in their apps with exclusive content, creator monetization programs, and sticky video creation tools. We‘ll likely see a few blockbuster acquisitions, akin to Facebook‘s purchase of Instagram, as legacy players look to buy their way into new video formats and demographics.

New contenders will aim to carve out video niches (ex: Twitch in gaming, Caffeine in entertainment & sports). Startups will rush to become the "TikTok of X" – whether that‘s business networking, dating, education, or other verticals. In an increasingly fragmented media landscape, brands will need to be strategic about which mix of established and emerging video platforms they invest in.

Social Media Takes On Television

As video commands more of our attention, social media companies have their sights set on the $200B+ television advertising market. The goal is no longer just to drive views and engagements, but to control a larger share of the time people spend consuming premium video content.

Facebook has made the biggest bet here with the global launch of Facebook Watch. Positioned as a YouTube competitor, Watch is a hub for original series, live sports, and publisher videos. Facebook is spending $1B+ to license mainstream hits to make Watch a go-to video destination. With Facebook‘s scale and precision ad targeting, Watch could mount a serious challenge to Hulu, Amazon, and even Netflix.

Other social networks are making their own aggressive moves into over-the-top (OTT) television. Snapchat has expanded its Shows format, inking deals with top media brands for serialized mobile-first programming. Twitter‘s identity is now closely linked to live streaming major events and sports. TikTok just announced a deal with the NFL to produce exclusive game day highlight packages. Even LinkedIn is reportedly planning to launch original podcast-style shows with business influencers.

For the major social platforms, on-demand and live premium video offers tremendous upside. It opens up lucrative new revenue streams through video ads and subscriptions. It increases the stickiness and perceived value of their services. And it positions them as leading beneficiaries in the shift from linear TV to streaming.

As the lines between social media and television blur, brands will think more like programmers. We‘ll see more serialized shows and franchises that use social channels like a "second screen." Shoppable and interactive video ads will become the norm. Influencer partnerships will mature beyond one-off sponsored posts to ongoing series and network-style development deals. Brands that can master the art of social-first "shows" will win the battle for audience attention.

Video-Driven Commerce Takes Off

From an e-commerce perspective, we‘re just beginning to scratch the surface of what‘s possible with social video. In China, video-based "social commerce" is already a $60B industry. Taobao, the country‘s largest e-commerce site, reports that product pages with video generate a 2X higher conversion rate than those without.

Product demo videos, unboxings, and video reviews are already becoming standard practice for online retailers. On social media, we‘ll see a rapid rise of shoppable videos, where users can click to purchase featured products without interrupting the viewing experience. Instagram is testing the ability to tag and shop multiple products directly within video posts. And platforms like TikTok and Snapchat are using augmented reality filters to enable virtual product try-ons.

The real breakthrough will come from native social commerce features, which allow the full purchase funnel to occur within social apps. Instagram already offers shoppable video ads and in-app checkout. Facebook is building shopping capabilities into Facebook Live and Watch shows. For brands, this offers the ultimate selling opportunity – a chance to engage users with entertaining video content and convert them into customers with just a few taps.

Over the next few years, social media will become the world‘s largest video storefront. With granular audience targeting and real-time feedback signals, brands will be able to test and optimize thousands of shoppable video assets to drive sales lift. And as 5G expands and mobile wallets proliferate, frictionless video commerce will scale from early adopters to the mainstream.

AI Enables the Next Generation of Video Experiences

Finally, advances in artificial intelligence will usher in a more dynamic, personalized era of social video. With AI-powered ranking and recommendation systems, platforms will get smarter about surfacing the most relevant videos to each user based on their unique interests and behaviors.

Video content itself will become more interactive and adaptive to individual viewers. Expect to see more branching narratives that allow users to control the storyline based on their choices. AI-generated avatars will star in customer service videos that simulate a human conversation. And brands will use machine learning to optimize video elements like title cards, color palettes, and end cards for different audience segments.

The robots aren‘t coming for video creators‘ jobs anytime soon. But AI will become an essential tool for marketers to deliver personalized, interactive, and emotionally intelligent video experiences at scale. The pressure will be on brands to harness customer data, marry it with predictive analytics, and translate those insights into thumb-stopping video content.

Perhaps the most exciting application of AI in social video will be real-time video analysis. Computer vision technology is already being used to detect faces, objects, text, and activities in social media videos and images. This data will allow brands to track metrics like brand visibility and product usage across millions of user-generated clips. We may see the emergence of an "earned video" category, akin to earned media, that helps quantify the impact of organic video content.

The Show Must Go On

As the saying goes, the future is already here – it‘s just not evenly distributed. Many of these social video trends are already materializing today, and will only accelerate in the years to come.

If the 2010s were about the rise of social media, then the 2020s will be about the complete transformation of social media by video. For brands that have already embraced video storytelling, this shift presents massive opportunities. But it also raises the stakes to produce higher-quality, interactive, personalized video experiences that cut through the noise.

The next billion-dollar consumer brands will be built on the backs of social video. The platforms that win the battle for video attention will achieve outsized gains in revenue and market share. And the marketers who adapt and innovate will be able to connect with customers in deeper, more meaningful ways than ever before. One thing is clear: the show must go on.