Vertical Video Statistics

For several years in a row, hanging out and watching videos on social media is one of the most popular online pastimes. There are a lot of interesting marketing questions prompted by this trend.

How do people use social media and what are their primary goals? What videos do they choose to watch and how do they watch them?

For the latter questions, recent video marketing statistics research pointed out that users prefer branded videos and love to watch them vertically.

Need more reasons to consider vertical video for your new online advertising strategy?

Here they are.

Statistics for Vertical Videos vs Other Video Types

• If you compare vertical videos with square ones, engagement is 4 times better on Facebook and 2.5 times better on Twitter.
• 90% of Twitter video views come from mobile devices – take this figure into account if you want to reach more Twitter users with video marketing.
• Vertical videos also have 13.8x more visibility on Facebook, and 90% more visibility compared to a post with an image.
• Vertical videos on Snapchat are watched to the end 9 times more often than horizontal ones.
• Paradoxically, YouTube is the less promising platform for video advertising. Its CTR is the lowest compared to Facebook and Instagram video advertising campaigns. Maybe the reason is in the ability to see vertical videos in Stories?
• 62% of users admitted that a Facebook story they saw warmed up their interest in a product or service.

What Do Users Think About Vertical Videos?

The first place to start is that 4.18 billion people are using the internet via mobile in 2020. 80% of social media traffic comes from mobile devices (61% of them are smartphones). So for watching videos on social media, watching them vertically is the most natural and intuitive way that doesn’t demand any excessive steps from the viewer. In fact, 94% of users hold their smartphones vertically all the time. And here is even more current statistical data.

• 57% of user-generated videos are shot with mobile devices, that is, vertically.
• Less than 30% of users will turn their smartphones sideways to see an ad, those who do only watch 14% of the video on average.

How Are Vertical Videos Performing?

When utilized on the right platform and shown to the right users at the right time, vertical videos consistently perform better than horizontal ones.

• 90% of vertical videos have a higher watch completion rate compared to horizontal ones.
• You can reach 58% more people with vertical branded video content.

Conclusion – Where to Use a Vertical Video?

As you can see, vertical videos have strong advertising potential and the ability to reach a large number of users. But where is the best place to show them?

As mentioned, in this case, YouTube is not an ideal marketing channel. The thing is, YouTube has been here for 15 years and it’s strongly associated with horizontal full-screen videos. Vertical videos on this platform make users feel frustrated. That’s why you should direct your vertical advertising campaigns to Instagram and Snapchat. And be careful with the latter, Snapchat users are very specific when it comes to content.

All these things taken into account, Instagram with its Stories and IGTV is an optimal place with a lively and diverse audience. And by the way, it is predicted that Instagram will become the most promising platform for increasing sales using video content, including vertical.

So feel free to check our guide to vertical video for marketing, and get in touch with us if you have questions or new ideas you’d like to discuss with or strategy experts regarding your video marketing campaigns!