To say that video has changed the digital landscape would be an understatement. Video marketing is here to stay for all businesses, big and small. The industry is constantly evolving, and it’s important to keep up. Now that we’re well into 2024, it’s crucial to ensure your content is relevant, dynamic, and engaging—but it’s equally important to understand consumer behavior and new trends to maximize your marketing. Here we’ve gathered some of the most important video marketing trends for 2024 that can give you the insight and strategies needed to effectively achieve success.

1. AI

We can’t make a list like this without mentioning artificial intelligence. In 2023, AI was definitely a buzzword, and it continues to be part of the conversation across industries moving forward, including in video production. AI has already simplified many aspects of work for a lot of people, and it will be exciting to see how AI tools can automate more processes in 2024. There’s ongoing exploration into how to reduce the time required for research, scriptwriting, content editing, and sound optimization. In addition, tools that generate images and videos based on given instructions have appeared. The future is exciting—and it’s moving fast!

2. Real people

It’s no coincidence that the Word of the Year 2023 was “authentic.” The polished era is over—what matters now is what feels real. That means creating content that feels honest, genuine, and human in order to connect with and engage your audience.

Many marketers predict that we’ll see more people in front of the camera, as brands shift focus toward one of video’s greatest strengths: relationships.

Video is a great tool for connecting with audiences. Even unfamiliar or complex products can be humanized through video. Does this mean you need to use actors or influencers? No—marketers, salespeople, founders, and other employees will increasingly appear on camera.

It’s important to highlight the value of the product, but now the team behind it should also be showcased. This helps build trust between you and your customers. By building relationships, video marketing contributes to long-term brand building. We expect to see plenty of real faces throughout the year.

3. Short videos are here to stay

They dominate social media platforms, and the trend is only growing. Short-form video marketing on social media remains one of the most effective ways to increase brand reach. A positive side note: short videos deliver strong ROI, and marketers and content creators will continue using them to boost social engagement.

There’s no fixed rule for how short a video should be, but we’re usually talking about videos under 90 seconds. In marketing, even shorter videos tend to perform best—typically 5 to 15 seconds—to match the audience’s ever-shrinking attention span.

The average Norwegian spends over four hours online every day (for young adults, it’s seven hours and 27 minutes), and it’s clear that short videos capture the attention of a broad audience. Platforms like TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube prioritize such videos in their algorithms, leading to growing popularity among users who continue to consume this format. The trend is expected to rise through the year, and brands that don’t adapt risk falling behind in the digital competition.

In 2024, capturing the viewer’s attention immediately is crucial. That means strong openings, clear calls to action, frequent posting, and staying current with trends. It’s also both cost-effective and strategic to repurpose and break down longer videos into multiple shorter ones to maximize content output.

With attention spans shrinking, the ability to tell your brand’s visual story concisely and engagingly is essential for success.

4. Long videos are making a comeback

Short videos are here to stay, but there’s growing evidence that more creators will experiment with something new to stand out—longer videos that allow for greater creativity. What works varies by industry, but this is something you can experiment with to see what fits your brand best.

Short videos naturally tend to have better watch-time statistics. However, many people skip even short videos simply because they lack relevance. If your video shows something we’re interested in, we’ll watch it. Although social media has shortened our patience, it’s not hopeless—we still have plenty of patience when watching a good series, for example. We binge one episode after another. This shows that we have patience when something truly resonates.

Longer videos can work especially well on YouTube. While YouTube also has a short-form platform (Shorts), its foundation is long-form content. That makes it ideal for podcasts, informational videos, and event films. If you’d like to read more about video length, we’ve written a post about the ideal video length here.

5. Videos without sound

Just like before, videos are still being watched without sound. In 2017, 85% of Facebook videos were watched without sound, and that trend continues across other social platforms. People watch videos on the bus, at work, in waiting rooms, or in bed without waking their partner. That’s why it’s essential to adapt your videos so they can be watched without audio. Adding subtitles is the most important thing you can do, and today there are many AI tools available to make this process easier.

6. Video SEO

In 2024, marketers will be more aware of video SEO than ever before. Using video has long been a known strategy to improve SEO, but now you also need to optimize your videos so they appear in search results for relevant keywords.

We can’t browse the web today without seeing videos, so you need to make sure your content is optimized for the right audience. This doesn’t only apply to Google and YouTube—it’s also relevant for social media, where recent studies show that Gen Z uses TikTok as their primary search engine.

How do you improve video SEO?
According to Wordstream, here are some steps you can take:

Consider paid promotion
SEO is constantly changing, and it’s not reliable to depend on it alone. Consider investing in paid video ads to boost visibility.

Create engaging content
Search engines evaluate factors like bounce rate, watch time, and engagement metrics for videos.

Transcribe
Transcriptions make videos more accessible and increase visibility for search engines. They provide text and more keywords, improving the chance of appearing in search results.

Create an engaging thumbnail
The thumbnail is what people see before clicking. A strong, relevant, and high-quality image significantly influences clicks.

Title and description
Titles and meta descriptions affect video rankings. Ask yourself what’s clickable and interesting, and write an engaging title and description—without stuffing keywords.

Place the video first on the page
Google usually indexes only one video per page, so if you have multiple, make sure the most important one is at the top. Also, make the video the page’s main focus—don’t bury it too far down, or it’ll get fewer plays.

Don’t use the same video in multiple places
Don’t compete with yourself by posting the same video in several locations—it can confuse search engines.

Optimize the rest of the page
Optimizing the video alone isn’t enough—the whole page must be SEO-friendly. If the rest of the page is low quality, it will affect the video’s ranking. Keep the page relevant.

Want to learn why brand-building videos are so powerful? Read this post..