Designed partially so small businesses and their marketing departments can compete with bigger budget firms and utilize the online and mobile space more effectively, the social media video sharing company Animoto has launched a square format for its Marketing Video Builder.
Animoto Square Video Format Targets Mobile News Feeds
The Animoto square video format enables marketers and small businesses to better utilize Facebook and Instagram with a technology designed to allow videos to stand out more on these platforms. Like the name suggests, square video is shot in a box format to bring the results in line with the best practices of leaders in the social media space like Facebook and Instagram. When it comes to increasingly important components like the mobile news feed, these square videos provide 78 percent more screen space than the other option, landscape videos.
Animoto responded with the update to its Marketing Video Builder after Facebook recommended brands start swapping out their 16:9 aspect ratios for 1:1 ratios that are more square and designed specifically for mobile. Adweek reports that, in one study, the new square format outperforms its predecessor by 54 percent when measuring view through rates for the first ten seconds of a video. The same study also found that people are 67 percent more likely to watch a square video over the landscape version because of the increased screen space.
“Communicating with video on social networks is quickly becoming mandatory for businesses of all sizes, particularly on Facebook as they rapidly move towards creating a ‘video-first’ user experience,” said Brad Jefferson, CEO and co-founder of Animoto. “By making it easy for businesses and marketers without professional skills or big budgets to create great looking videos in square format — a format that is proven to get more views and better engagement on Facebook’s mobile newsfeed, where over 90 percent of Facebook consumption happens — we are helping businesses create the type of thumb-stopping, high performing content that, until today, was once only available to big brands.”
Animoto ’s Marketing Video Builder is designed to create video content for that market segment termed a video-first world. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has used the phrase to describe a trend whereby he sees video at the heart of all the apps and services people use in the near future. Animoto ’s Marketing Video Builder includes other features like pre-built storyboards and a drag and drop interface.
The company has locations in San Francisco and New York City.
Image: Animoto
This article, “Animoto Update Targets Small Business With Square Video Capability” was first published on Small Business Trends