Hesitating which video format to produce? Buffer might have a helpful answer for you.

Every week, there is a new announcement that tells us we should now be trying something different with our content. And in the past 24 months, a lot of these have been about video.

Duration limits have increased, new formats were introduced, new interactive elements were added, and the announcements come from all the social networks.

Buffer recently conducted a detailed study on how video format impacts costs and engagement.

The study is extensive and the article they posted about it details their findings with a lot of numbers and charts, but they summed it up into three key takeaways:

  1. Mobile content consumption is exponentially increasing;
  2. Square video outperformed landscape video in both views and engagement;
  3. It costs significantly less to advertise to users using square video on mobile.

Their study focused on square vs horizontal video, it didn’t cover vertical videos (which we have started doing for brands here at Toast, with great success!), but you might be able to grab some insights into how to approach vertical production on your end from the charts and numbers they provide.

Nonetheless, this is a great article that offers key statistics you can use when creating your video marketing strategy…

…in terms of engagement:

“Square video outperformed landscape video on each social media network in terms of video views, engagement (likes, comments, and shares), and completion rate (%).”

…and in terms of costs:

“Our experiments revealed the fact that it costs 7.5% less to get someone to engage with square video on Facebook and a whopping 33% less to get someone to engage with square video on Instagram.”

I’ll let you scan or read this great (and long) Buffer article. This is definitely one to keep in your bookmarks.