Global Social Video Growth Opportunities

Social videos are short recordings (between 15 seconds and 3 minutes) designed specifically for social media platforms. Social videos primarily serve to drive viewer engagement through interactions such as comments, reactions, likes, or dislikes. Individual users and businesses can create social videos. These videos are frequently only suitable for a specific hosting platform. Apart from promoting user interaction, social videos have various purposes, including brand building and expanding eCommerce operations.

The social video market is comprised of short-video platforms, which either feature short-form videos as their main feature or as one of their main offerings. Short-video platforms generate much of their revenues through advertising, with brands paying to place advertisements across users’ feeds, either organically or inorganically. Short-video platforms also secure revenues through alternative channels such as premium subscriptions or paid customization, which are collectively referred to as consumer spending.

This highly competitive market is dominated by a few players, namely ByteDance, Kuaishou, Meta, and Alphabet. Nonetheless, the social video market is currently experiencing the abrupt entry of numerous competitors of various sizes and across regions and is driven by the prospect of profitable opportunities such as social commerce, livestreaming, or content creators.

Frost & Sullivan forecasts that the global social video market will grow from $151.68 billion in 2021 to $637.94 billion in 2028, increasing at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 22.7% during that period. From Frost & Sullivan’s view, higher growth rates will occur in the medium term, primarily related to the expected entry of streaming platforms, improvements in social media algorithms, and the expansion of video streaming capabilities across the globe. In the long term, we expect this growth to slow down in relation to anticipated regulatory interventions.

This report does not account for other types of video-based media, such as ephemeral (or time-limited) content.