In 2020 a little-used acronym – VUCA (Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous) resurfaced to describe the unpredictability of the times. More recently, the anthropologist and futurist Jamais Cascio unleashed BANI (Brittle, Anxious, Non-Linear and Incomprehensible) to express the unique and wildly chaotic post-pandemic era we find ourselves in.
Regardless of the acronym du jour to describe today’s unpredictable business weather conditions, one thing feels sure: brands that do business online need new tools and strategies to stabilise their ships in today’s seas. Fortunately, modern web ecosystems are evolving to offer greater control of IT and agility and, in the end, deliver better user experiences. One notable area is visual media.
New data recently published in our 2022 State of Visual Media report shows that for much of 2021 and through May of 2022, there has been a staggering 25% growth of images and up to 37% growth of video traffic online. These figures are based on patterns identified from 219 billion transactions per month across the channels of 375 of our enterprise customers. The industries we looked at were education, financial services, food and drink, manufacturing, automotive, marketing and ad tech, media and entertainment, retail and e-commerce, software and technology, and travel and recreation.
Channels up, channels down. But visuals help in all of them
True to our BANI times, anyone willing to bet on which digital channel will win the fight for customer eyeballs won’t get a definitive answer from our report—because there isn’t one. Overall, TikTok continues to rise, while Facebook and Pinterest are declining. But the data shows an ever-changing picture, where one platform can unexpectedly peak one month and dip the next. For example, our data shows that Facebook remains the number one social media channel (more than 154 billion image requests), followed by Instagram (74 billion image requests) and Pinterest (51 billion requests). Comparing April 2021 with April 2022, Facebook requests declined by 23% and Pinterest by 79%, while Instagram gained two per cent and TikTok shot up by 67%. We can conclude that requests for Facebook and Pinterest are continuously declining, while Instagram remains stable, and TikTok is undeniably rising.
Whichever channels or apps companies want to support and connect with users on, there can be no denying that companies of all sizes across every industry are working hard to use visual media to deliver engaging online experiences at every digital touchpoint. We saw global brands of all sizes ratchet up for Black Friday 2021 by using more visual media. E-commerce brands in our report grew image bandwidth by 186% compared to their average annual traffic, while small and medium brands experienced peaks of up to 415%. On the video side, the largest e-commerce brands saw their video volume soar, with one player confirming to us that its video traffic spiked up 35% over that November long weekend, from 20 Tb a week to 52. In parallel, travel industry operators we work with reported a more than 50% increase in video usage as part of their post-pandemic recovery.
It’s clear from our report that ‘epic scale’ capacity combined with real-time flexibility and responsiveness around visual media is now not just the new normal—it’s basic table stakes now. To handle the peaks of image and video traffic at the levels of response users expect our inspiring tech leaders to re-evaluate their IT architectures. Brands we work with from River Island, Paul Smith, Rapha and many others say they’re migrating to MACH (Microservices based, API-first, Cloud-native SaaS and Headless) architectures to provide greater flexibility, resilience, and responsiveness. They’re not alone: according to a recent survey from the MACH Alliance, 47% of tech leaders are aspiring to move from monolithic deployments to best-of-breed, composable software. 79% strongly intend to add more MACH components to their architecture in the future.
Preparing for whatever complexity the market throws at you
Having the right visual media infrastructure isn’t just about the IT architecture. Brands in our study revealed an impetus to move to smarter and smaller image formats. For example, the new lightweight WebP was the most popular image format, accounting for 59% of image requests while consuming just 35% of all bandwidth. Yes, JPEG remained the most widely supported and still the largest bandwidth consumer at 38% — however, it only accounted for 23% of all requests.
To cope with both unpredictable user preferences and the need to always be ready for flex to meet demand, brands are optimising their visual media to meet a wide and ever-changing range of business goals. That includes getting products to market faster, improving productivity and cost savings, and offering greater accessibility and sustainability.
Visual media is a catalyst for growth, never a bottleneck
Whether it’s being able to launch new TikTok campaigns right when an opportunity arises or to enable complex Direct-to-Avatar (D2A) commerce in the Metaverse, managing visual media well and having the right automation tech to support are now competitive advantages. To illustrate, one brand featured in our report, London-based fashion leader Paul Smith, realised a 45% boost in video-enabled sales and a 40% reduction in digital asset management costs by automating and optimising its visual media management.
Without a doubt, times are not just tough but can even feel disorientating and scary for business right now. Thankfully, automation tools are out there to help brands deliver superb visual experiences, while improving efficiency and productivity so that “BANI” becomes much easier to manage.
The full results of the Cloudinary 2022 State of Visual Media report referred to in this article are available here.
Cloudinary’s mission is to empower companies to deliver visual experiences that inspire and connect by unleashing the full potential of their media. With more than 50 billion assets under management and 7,500 customers worldwide, Cloudinary is the industry standard for developers, creators and marketers looking to upload, store, transform, manage, and deliver images and videos online. As a result, leading brands like Atlassian, Bleacher Report, Bombas Grubhub, Hinge, NBC, Mediavine, Peloton, Petco and Under Armour are seeing significant business value in using Cloudinary, including faster time to market, higher user satisfaction and increased engagement and conversions. For more information, visit www.cloudinary.com.
