Marketers should be creating video content to keep their audiences engaged online as people spend more time viewing videos online.

It’s no wonder video is quickly becoming the preferred content format for marketers. eMarketer found consumers spend 5.5 hours watching videos every day on average, and about 20 percent of that time is spent on digital content.

Agile brands have been prepping for the rise in online viewership and creating custom video content to stay in front of audiences. Whether in the form of pre-roll ads, corporate promos or video blogs, companies have quietly been building archives to arm themselves with interactivity, and sprinkling those resources across channels to keep their audiences engaged.

Videos are highly effective sales tools

Earlier this year, Brafton reported that about 70 percent of marketers say video is the most effective kind of content they’re creating.

57 percent of retail brands notice average order values increase when users watch just one video

A separate study from LiveClicker suggests that videos don’t just impact the number of conversions, they also increase the value of conversions. Around 57 percent of retail brands said they notice average order values increase when users watch just one video they’ve produced – and sales totals double when people have watched 10 or more videos.

Social media is more engaging with video content

As further evidence of the power of online videos, Facebook recently hit a new benchmark for content engagement. Every day, users view 4 billion videos on the network. This is up from 3 billion at the end of 2014, and the rapid growth is likely owed to Facebook’s autoplay. Introduced last year, this feature automatically starts playing videos (without sound) as users scroll through their News Feeds.

According to Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg, brand marketers and small businesses alike stand to benefit from creating video content for their social media marketing campaigns.

“Over 1 million SMBs have posted videos and done really small ad buys around them. And that’s pretty cool because I don’t think there are 1 million advertisers who have bought TV ads in that same period of time,” Sandberg said.

As videos continue to become a regular mix in marketing strategies, we’ll see digital screen time eating further into TV’s shrinking margin. Companies are using online video as a reason to flex their creative muscles and produce resources that show the behind-the-scenes to showcase their employees’ personalities. As brands ditch boring corporate concepts and embrace video as an engaging outlet, they will also see their target audiences spending more time on their web channels.

To learn more about video marketing from start to finish, check out these additional resources: 

Lauren Kaye is a Marketing Editor at Brafton Inc. She studied creative and technical writing at Virginia Tech before pursuing the digital frontier and finding content marketing was the best place to put her passions to work. Lauren also writes creative short fiction, hikes in New England and appreciates a good book recommendation.