A few years ago, mobile advertising seemed to be one of the biggest challenges to advertisers with many struggling to monetize the huge traffic they received from their target audience. The likes of Alphabet’s (GOOG) (GOOGL) Google and Facebook (FB) were good examples as they failed to match their massive user-bases with monetization levels achieved on their respective desktop platforms.

However, that has since changed, and now, mobile advertising is one of the most crucial forms of advertising in most businesses’ marketing strategies. Traction in this business space began with text ads, then came display ads, and finally video ads.

Video advertising has since grown to become more popular on mobile platforms than it is on desktop platforms. In fact, according to this article published on online video, a recent study showed that “75 percent of global internet use will be mobile in 2017, with 60 percent of global digital ad dollars pouring into mobile advertising by 2018.” The same report predicts mobile ad expenditure to hit $134 billion in 2018, which is more than what will be spent on mainstream media (newspaper, magazine, cinema, and outdoor advertising put together).

As such, this indicates that while publishers were slow to adapt to the latest trends in video advertising, they have picked up over the last few years and now the likes of YouTube and Facebook’s Sponsored Videos can brace themselves for a real challenge.

The developments in mobile video advertising have attracted the attention of several online video production start-ups, which has increased competition in the market thereby promoting innovation. Most video production companies such as the Australian-based Creativa have embraced the paradigm shift in the video advertising market by offering creative video content to clients. And in a bid to keeping up with the current market trends, some have focused on increasing video engagement by creating customized video content that promotes interaction between the target audience.

It is common knowledge that a successful video advertising campaign begins with content that attracts high engagement levels. The longer the target audience can stay engaged the higher the chances of converting them into potential customers.

As such, video production companies like Creativa are trying to come up with innovative ways that can keep the targeted audience engaged for prolonged periods, and this includes using animated videos, as well as, educative fun videos that are shareable across various social media platforms.

According to the latest reports, mobile is rapidly becoming the preferred way to watch a video. In Q4 2016, 54% of all video starts were made on mobile platforms. This was a slight increase sequentially from Q3’s 52%.

Illustratively reports also indicate that consumers spend 20 minutes per day watching videos on mobile, which is 4 minutes more than the time they spent on desktop devices. This translates to nearly 40% more compared to the time spent viewing videos on mobile in 2015. And based on this trend, forecasts indicate that the time spent will grow by another 33% in 2017 and a further 27% in 2018, according to an article published on Business Insider.

Competition has led to the manufacture of cheap smartphones and this ensures penetration of internet access and services to the developing countries. This has widened the addressable market for online video production companies. Most companies have adopted the use of omnichannel marketing, which means that now, they use all available platforms to advertise their products including television, radio, computers, and smartphones.

As such, the elevated levels of internet penetration in the emerging markets coupled with the changing trends in the digital marketing space have created the ideal marketplace for mobile video advertising to grow.

This is why it is outpacing desktop video advertising. There are more people who have access to smartphones than there are those who have access to desktop computers and laptops. In addition, the portability factor means that customers can watch videos on their mobile phones even when on the move contrary to those that use desktop platforms.

Conclusion

In summary, mobile platforms are playing a huge part in driving video adverting to the next level. This comes after a period when it seemed that the video advertising market was slowing. The rapid adoption of mobile video streaming applications coupled with the rise of the messenger apps has created one of the most exciting markets for advertisers. This will only continue to grow for the foreseeable future based on recent research data.