What Instagram’s 60 second videos mean for the sporting world
After offering 60-seconds video ads to some marketers last month, Facebook-owned platform Instagram will now allow all users and brands to upload minute-long videos, previously limiting video-length to just 15 seconds.
The powers at be at Instagram have obviously sensed the shifting sands in social video and has placed emphasis on grasping the users who watch more video content across social platforms. And considering on Instagram in the last six months, the time people spent watching video increased by more than 40 percent, it’s probably a good time for change.
Moreover, Instagram has begun measuring the reach and views of each video, helping in their ability to give advertisers a better idea of how their videos are being consumed.
With the new feature, Instagram breaks away from its competitors who specialise in short video content including Snapchat and Vine, and the change is likely to change users’ habits as well as how they use the platform to view or disseminate content on the platform.
But, despite obvious ramifications after last week’s UK High Court ruling such as further copyright restrictions, what does the change mean for brands and users in the sporting world?
A new way for brands and sports organisations to use video
Make no mistake, 60 seconds is a very long period of time when referring to social video, but the change really opens the floor for brands and organisations to exploit it for the use of product promotion and enable them to include a whole lot of content which would have previously been excluded.
Some brands share already a lot of videos on Instagram like adidas. The Germand brand has recently launched a huge campaign on the platform to promote its new boots withtout laces, sharing a collection of short videos featuring some ambassadors including İlkay Gündoğan (below). The new feature should encourage brands to share more content in the same video.
With the 15 second video window too short to create full ads, the new limit will see Instagram become a new great advertising platform in which brands will be able to tell a real story with products and ambassadors (like YouTube or Facebook). Nowadays, brands share mostly teasers or GIFs to respect current video-length limit.
An opportunity for clubs to use more videos
Instagram is not the best social platform for sports clubs to share videos. The majority of teams and clubs share their video content on their own web, YouTube or Facebook channels. However, the new feature will definitely encourage clubs to user more Instagram as the reach far outweighs that of YouTube or website for example.
The one minute limit gives clubs the perfect opportunity to take fans behind the scenes and show more of what happens in training, fan/player competitions (ie. FC Bayern below), daily news, interviews (ie. FC Barcelona below) and even highlights of the previous game.
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