{"id":22460,"date":"2021-12-15T14:23:19","date_gmt":"2021-12-15T14:23:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/takeaways_from_our_2021_state_of_visual_media_report"},"modified":"2024-09-07T13:04:32","modified_gmt":"2024-09-07T20:04:32","slug":"takeaways_from_our_2021_state_of_visual_media_report","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cloudinary.com\/blog\/takeaways_from_our_2021_state_of_visual_media_report","title":{"rendered":"Key Takeaways From Our 2021 State of Visual Media Report"},"content":{"rendered":"

We recently released our 2021 State of Visual Media report, which offers a view into how visual media content is produced, managed, viewed, and consumed. For this third annual report, we analyzed a massive amount of visual-related data, looking at billions of image and video assets across 670 enterprise customers and 10 vertical industries, to reveal key trends in visual engagement, particularly those accelerated by the pandemic. We also take a look at what\u2019s needed to raise the bar on these visual-first experiences as we continue on in a world in which fast, flawless visual content will remain critically important to the user experience.<\/p>\n

I was thrilled to have the opportunity to moderate a session at our 2021 ImageCon conference in October (now available on-demand<\/a>) during which we dug in on three key report takeaways: the need for next-gen image formats, the continued rise of video, and the big opportunity that exists within \u2018dark social\u2019 referral traffic.<\/p>\n

Modern Web, Modern Formats<\/h2>\n

In March 2021 alone, we managed and delivered an average of 2.4 million image and video assets per Cloudinary customer. Brands are using a wide variety of image types, and we\u2019re seeing that lighter file formats are beginning to become more popular as legacy ones fade out.<\/p>\n

What brand doesn\u2019t want to deliver the best end-user experience possible? That ideal experience is made possible by prioritizing mobile-first responsiveness. You want your page to load as quickly as possible, and larger images take longer to load. Enter new image formats! While JPG<\/a> and PNG are still leading formats, lightweight formats are catching up super quickly. When brands use newer, lighter file formats, like WebP, images appear quickly, leading to significant reductions in battery usage.<\/p>\n

\u201cVery often, the LCP (Largest Contentful Paint) is going to be an image,\u201d offered Jon Sneyers, Senior Image Researcher here at Cloudinary and co-creator of the new JPEG XL image codec. \u201cTo get a better page rank and user experience, you need your images to appear quickly. A more modern codex can make your images load even quicker.\u201d<\/p>\n

Leveraging modern image formats also enables more creative web design. For example, using newer programs makes it possible to have images on your website that are transparent, creating better color accuracy and contributing to that to improved user experience.<\/p>\n

JPEG XL is an image format designed with the web in mind, with benefits like bandwidth reduction, backwards compatibility and high dynamic range. Many brands use automatic format selection on their websites, meaning the newest image type will be used automatically, so once it becomes an option for more browsers, this rich media will be implemented automatically.<\/p>\n

Video should be rich and attention-grabbing.<\/h2>\n

No doubt video remains a critical medium for visual storytelling. From January 2019 and through the pandemic, video requests on our platform doubled from 6.8% to 12.79%, and video bandwidth grew by more than 140% in Q2 2020.. More industries and brands are using video frequently for marketing, such as live streaming, personalized ads, user-generated content (UGC), and social.<\/p>\n

Brands must make videos accessible to all viewers, providing accurate captions and giving viewers the ability to control the content in terms of play, pause, \u2018skip ahead\u2019 and volume. When it comes to previews, make sure that the content in the video is reflected accurately and attention-grabbing.<\/p>\n

In terms of UGC, it\u2019s also important to keep content safe. Brands must moderate content and pay attention, as well as make sure it\u2019s an easy upload process for the content creator.<\/p>\n

Brands must also keep in mind how videos will look in the social media platform itself. Quality will be affected if the video format doesn\u2019t align with the social media\u2019s sizing and quality requirements; it\u2019s necessary to choose the best video format for the viewers\u2019 device and utilize the latest software.<\/p>\n

Businesses can achieve results with video through engagement and personalization. With AI, brands can use videos to create content that specifically engages the user, as well as monitor media quickly and easily.<\/p>\n

\u201cMake sure to utilize APIs to connect your video technology to your tech stack and drive more efficiency,\u201d offered Amit Erental, Senior Manager for Cloudinary\u2019s Video Business Lines . \u201cUse personalized and shoppable videos because they are very powerful. Today, you can create them automatically and scale all of your activity around video.\u201d<\/p>\n

Brands must prepare images and videos for microbrowsers.<\/h2>\n

Microbrowsers are tiny, headless browsers that pull bits and pieces of information from the link pages and assemble those rich previews into a message on a different channel. For example, when you paste a URL into Slack or Facebook messenger, the URL is transformed into a bigger, richer click target, assembled from content pulled from the link page.<\/p>\n

\u201cMicrobrowsers are a golden opportunity for brands,\u201d said Eric Portis, Web Platform Advocate at Cloudinary. \u201cMicrobrowsers give you your first and only chance to insert yourself in the most valuable and least trackable form of marketing: social sharing. You can crack a first impression and put your best foot forward.\u201d<\/p>\n

Users\u2019 first impressions aren\u2019t often coming from homepages or search results; first impressions come from the previews that come from word-of-mouth, links swapped amongst family and friends.<\/p>\n

How can brands optimize microbrowsers to achieve results?<\/p>\n