YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok are among the social media platforms with the highest ROI, according to our 2024 State of Marketing Report. So, it‘s safe to say that’s where consumers watch social media videos.
In fact, our most recent Video Marketing Report shows Instagram is the top social media platform for ROI, engagement, and lead generation for sharing marketing videos.
Behind Instagram is YouTube regarding ROI and lead generation.
Of course, I can‘t leave out TikTok, considering it’s the app I find myself scrolling through for hours on end. The short-form video platform has the 3rd highest ROI and comes in 2nd for engagement behind Instagram.
Finally, there's Facebook. While 60% of marketers sharing marketing videos use the longstanding Meta-owned platform, it comes in fourth place for ROI, lead generation, and engagement.
Explore more marketing strategies!13 Best Social Media Video Platforms
1. Youtube
YouTube is the largest video-sharing platform and the second-largest social media platform in the world, with over 2.7 billion users. According to Neilsen, YouTube topped the list for streaming time for 17 consecutive months in July.
So, if you‘re wondering if the platform can be a great addition to your video marketing or social media strategy—the numbers suggest that’s the right move!
What I love most about YouTube is how the platform can host diverse formats of videos, such as live streaming, short-form videos, and long-form videos.
You can also utilize YouTube's Community tab to speak to engage with your audience in between video uploads.
Other key features and benefits include:
AI-generated transcriptions and captions
Straightforward privacy settings
Option to pay to promote your videos on YouTube and Google
The ability to curate your videos into playlists
Data analytics and management tools via YouTube Studio
Monetization options via the YouTube Partner Program
Robust audio library
2. TIktok
TikTok is an excellent platform for attracting a Gen Z audience.
Our 2024 Consumer Trends Report shows that 48% of Gen Z consumers prefer to learn about new products via short-form videos on TikTok, and 72% say they've used the app in the last three months.
Some of my favorite features of TikTok are:
Live stream shopping capabilities
Several monetization opportunities, including the ability for viewers to send gifts
Hashtags for boosts in engagement and community building
Advertising options for business accounts
Constantly growing library of trending songs and sounds
3. Instagram
Instagram is also popular among Gen Z, with 72% reporting to have used the app in the last three months. It's a great platform for promoting products and selling them in-app.
Here are some of the best features:
E-commerce capabilities via Instagram storefronts
Live stream capabilities
Shoppable stories
Why are short-form videos so popular?
There are a few reasons short-form videos are more popular than ever among consumers and marketers, and I‘ll visit those in a bit. For now, I want to get into the psychology of it all—that’s why we're here, right? Walk with me.
Consumer Attention Spans are Shrinking
Science tells us that one of the crucial reasons we love short-form videos is that our attention spans are getting shorter and shorter.
Dr. Gloria Mark, a psychologist, recently wrote a book called Attention Span: A Groundbreaking Way to Restore Balance, Happiness, and Productivity, and she says her research indicates people's attention spans have been shrinking over the last 20 years.
Dr. Mark shared her findings on Speaking of Psychology, an American Psychological Association podcast.
Her findings came from a decades-long experiment she participated in, which was first conducted by shadowing participants and tracking their activities via stopwatches.
“We would record the start time and the stop time,” she said.
She explains, “So you're on a screen where you're working in a Word doc. As soon as you get to that screen, we click start time. As soon as they turned away and checked the email, we clicked stop time for the Word document and start time for the email.”
Over time, logging techniques became more sophisticated as technology advanced, and it only made the pattern of shrinking attention spans clearer.
“So back in 2004, we found the average attention span on any screen to be two and a half minutes on average,” Dr. Mark recalls during the interview. “Throughout the years, it became shorter. So around 2012, we found it to be 75 seconds.”
Dr. Mark says the number continued to dip as the years went on.
“And then in the last five, six years, we found it to average about 47 seconds—and others have replicated this result within a few seconds. So it seems to be quite robust,” she says.
And this trend of dwindling attention spans is affecting how we consume content. And I'm not just talking about social media videos — even television and film shots are getting more brief, according to Dr. Mark.
“They started out much longer. They now average about four seconds a shot length,” she says. “If you watch MTV music videos, they're much shorter. They're only a couple of seconds. So we've become accustomed to seeing very fast shot lengths when we look at TV and film.”
Dr. Mark explains during the interview that it‘s a chicken vs. egg situation — she’s unsure which came first or what's influencing the other.
However, the fact remains that we‘re becoming more accustomed to shorter bursts of content, and it’s bleeding into the kind of content we consume and what's being created.
Studies found that most consumers will only watch an entire video if it's less than 60 seconds long. Then you have apps like TikTok, YouTube Shorts, and Instagram Reels that push short-form videos to users in an infinite scroll format.
Furthermore, our 2024 Marketing Trends Report found that almost a third of marketing professionals say their company will leverage short-form video content in 2024, and 53% said they'll boost their investment in the content type this year.
