2024 video trends to create engagement-worthy content
Good video is key to great marketing. On screens both big and small — not to mention the mobile screens found in the pockets of half of Earth’s population — audiences are more dialed into video content than ever. Making unique content to compete for viewers’ attention means more than just being up on video best practices. To stay relevant, you need to stay one step ahead.
Read on for the four biggest video trends that content creators need to know for the year ahead. In this article, you’ll learn what to embrace in 2024, why video design matters, and which tools can help you turn these trends into videos everybody wants to watch.
1. User-generated content (UGC)
User-generated content is original content about a product or service that individuals or a brand’s audience create — rather than the brand itself or its marketers. It comes in many forms, such as blogs, product reviews, and social media posts. Customers can share UGC in other ways, such as Q&A forums, merchandise photos, unboxing videos, and testimonials. Brands can also use things like sponsorships and compensated posts to pay creators to generate UGC. In 2023, brands using UGC in their marketing campaigns saw an estimated 25 percent increase in engagement, a gain expected to continue in an upward trend in 2024.
UGC offers many benefits
UGC works because it's built by brand loyalists who are already passionate about a company, have established themselves as advocates within its community, and often have their own audiences. Many people trust UGC content and deem it more credible than when a brand speaks about its own products because it’s coming from a fellow customer. UGC translates into a more authentic appeal that generates interest from both clients and potential customers with 93 percent of consumers saying that UGC is helpful when making a purchasing decision.
Video and UGC go hand in hand
Because so much UGC is already in video format, and because so many brand users are eager to produce it, it's relatively easy to take advantage of this 2024 trend.
Creative reposts
Give UGC videos an additional boost by reposting them on your social media channels. With the user's permission, try some quick video editing options like resizing or trimming, or even convert the video into a GIF to repurpose this valuable content.
Content requests
You can also solicit content. For example, ask your community for video testimonials, then, with the creators' permission, incorporate that content into a video you produce about an overarching topic or theme. You can create for a social platform or whip up content quickly using video clips from a gallery and UGC.
2. Short-form video content
Thanks to Instagram and TikTok, as well as the rise of social media as a search engine, short-form video content is more popular than ever and will continue to trend in 2024. Viewers want engaging, bite-sized videos, and creators need to deliver content quickly and effectively to keep consumers and brands happy.
Keep it short and sweet
Snappy, visually appealing videos that convey a message concisely will be critical for success in 2024, so it's time to think outside the box. Ideally, videos should be 60 seconds or less and around 15-30 seconds for optimal engagement on social media. Video templates are a great tool for creating short-form video content that gets attention. And the endlessly customizable options mean you can keep your audience interested while staying on-brand.
Surprise viewers with animation
Consider a novel approach to short-form video content by using animations. Animations often require a surprisingly small amount of effort but can achieve a head-turning result. Create a custom character and add audio using a platform like Adobe Express for a quick and easy video that will surprise and delight your viewers.
Create faster with connected workflows
When all your work happens in one place, it's easy to keep content production moving quickly. Building in an integrated platform makes it simple to produce, edit, and share short-form videos, so you can keep up with demand without compromising quality.
3. Artificial intelligence (AI)
As a trend, AI is already ubiquitous and is expected to reach a global market size of more than $50 billion by 2028. This makes AI a vital part of the video landscape for the new year and beyond. Whether you want to streamline your production methods or add or remove objects from videos, AI makes creating videos easier than ever for everyone. Let’s take a look at how to incorporate it into your creative practice.
Simplify your processes
Use generative AI to drive a simpler, smoother, and faster approach to video production. When you're getting started with a project, AI tools can help you brainstorm and visualize ideas, creating a jumping-off point for your team's imagination. Once you've reached the video editing phase, try AI to advance your process by speeding up tasks like transcription, editing, adjusting audio, and more.
Get a content creation helping hand
The generative approach of AI aids the creative process by enhancing video production — not replacing it. Generative AI can help an image achieve a desired look and feel through tools like text effects, recoloring, and even text-to-image. This gives you a great launchpad for developing video that's built on that look and feel because you've focused your creative vision with AI assistance.
4. Captions
A lot of video content trends are determined by social media because it's where so much of that content lives. One of those growing trends is captions. The benefits that captioning provides for all kinds of users makes it an important trend to take advantage of in 2024, no matter how you create video content.
Captions are for everybody
In 2019, 80 percent of consumers were more likely to watch an entire video if captions were available, and a 2023 study found 68 percent of respondents watch digital video on their smartphones. Together, these statistics make it clear that when we consume video content, we're frequently doing it on our phones with the sound off.
Captions have always been crucial to accessibility for consumers with disabilities who rely on them to understand and connect with content. Today they’re more important than ever, and are integral to getting a brand, product, or message across to all types of audiences.
Make adding captions a no-brainer
The modern digital production toolkit is filled with options for building captions into your video content process. Thanks to speech-to-text AI capabilities, you can easily create an instant transcript right inside the video production tool you're already using and turn that transcript into captions. You can also import your video to an editing platform to generate captions and then download your new video with captions as an MP4 file.
Capitalize on 2024 video trends with Adobe Creative Cloud
Consumer video demands pose unique creative challenges, and while you need to be up to the task, it's never been easier, faster, or more fun to create great video content. Adobe Premiere Pro offers feature-loaded video editing with a simple workflow, and Adobe Express joins forces with generative AI powered by Adobe Firefly for platform-ready video content. These solutions provide you with effective tools and an intuitive creative process that's as good as the results they produce.
Don't wait to get in on these 2024 video trends. Start creating great video content today.