What is Short-form Video Advertising?

Short-form video advertising is everywhere. We’ve all seen the TikToks and the Instagram Reels… they are taking over the social media landscape.

After TikTok was released in 2018 and its surging popularity during the 2020 pandemic, other social media platforms started creating their own versions of short-form video features. Instagram came out with Reels and YouTube came out with Shorts, and now Facebook is jumping on the bandwagon. 

And let’s not forget about our beloved Vine… RIP.

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When did it take flight?

TikTok became extremely popular after the viral app Vine shut down in 2017. Vine was an app that allowed users to post six-second videos, and it became the top-sharing application of its time.

As other apps such as Instagram started offering higher monetary earnings than Vine did, most users moved on to other platforms. This created an opening for an app like TikTok to come to the market and one year after Vines “death,” TikTok was released.

Let’s talk about TikTok

In 2023, TikTok has over 1.53 billion active users and is the most engaging social media app on the market. It has been downloaded over three billion times (yes… you read that right) and was the most downloaded app of 2020, 2021, and 2022.

90% of users open the TikTok app daily and average 52 minutes of watching per day. With this impressive audience reach, it’s no wonder advertising has exploded on this platform and others like it.
87% of TikTok content uses hashtags that help promote and advertise aspects of the video, the creator, and/or what’s trending at the time.
The entertainment category of TikTok, which includes mostly influencer content, has over 535 billion hashtags views and an ad reach of over 885 million users.

Influencing is one of TikTok’s biggest components and has become crucial to marketing campaigns. Influencing on TikTok boosts view-through ratings by 193% due to the personal connections and interests that the influencer and the viewer share. This is a recipe for success for any business that is willing to put the effort into short-form video advertising.

On average, 61% of TikTok users will buy from brands if they have seen them advertised in some way on TikTok. This can include paid advertisements, influencer marketing, and product placement videos. Influencers can range from beauty, clothes, hair, sports products, technology, politics, and many more. With this field being so versatile, and TikTok allowing users the ability to go viral overnight, there is an influencer for almost every product and niche.

Why it works

With the average person’s attention span declining as technology advances, short-form video advertising has absolutely dominated all other forms of social media advertising. The average person’s attention span is between six and seven seconds. However, Gen Z’s attention span is even shorter, at around three to four seconds. This can possibly be blamed on the ability to skip ads being so readily available to the younger generations, as traditional cable TV and commercials have become almost obsolete. In many cases, commercials have now become fifteen-second ads you have to watch before you can skip to your program on Hulu or other streaming services.

Short-form video advertising has made influencing careers extremely desirable and profitable. Since most social media platforms have their own version at this point, the content is easily re-shareable among multiple apps and there is often an option to post the same video to multiple social media apps at once. By opting for short-form video advertising, the brand that’s being advertised is also being humanized. This form of advertising allows marketers to get in on popular trends and appeal to younger generations quickly and easily.

DDL’s take on it

DDL’s social team is a big fan of hopping on trending sounds and TikToks. We’ve started implementing Instagram Reels, and made a TikTok account to showcase workplace humor to personalize our brand. Participating in trends like these show our viewers our creativity, humor, and personality.

We’ve also added influencer marketing to our list of services. We’ve been able to work with some great TikTok/Instagram influencers, such Ian Brownhill (the New England Guy) and Lindsey Iadeluca.

Ian has become a huge conglomerate for our clients – Seasons Corner Market and the Rhode Island Lottery. Using his humor and New England spin has made viewership of our pages increase and recognizability of the brands shoot through the roof.

Lindsay Iadeluca is another influencer we’ve partnered with on behalf of Rhode Island College to increase enrollment in 18-29 year olds.

Short-form video advertising has entered the chat – and it’s here to stay.