Two years ago, Twitter-owned Vine was growing like kudzu. It was widely embraced by both consumers and marketers who sought to push the envelope with creative six-second clips. But the explosion of new video formats on Facebook, Snapchat and YouTube, which all now boast sizable scale, has caused top brands to quietly slip away.
"Over time, it became difficult for many marketers to achieve scale [on Vine]," explained Tyler Hissey, senior digital strategist at Hill Holliday. "In the last six months or so, brands have started to de-emphasize Vine as a channel because of the targeting capabilities on all these other platforms."
Data is proving this out. Video analytics firm Tubular Labs reviewed Vine, Instagram, Facebook and YouTube accounts of 40 major brands, including Coca-Cola, Target and Dunkin' Donuts. Between September and November, marketers posted 2,500 social videos, and Vine contributed just 113 of those clips—equivalent to 4 percent of branded content.
Only 13 of the 40 brands posted to Vine during the third quarter of 2015, down from 21 in the first quarter of this year, Tubular found....
Without relevance, Twitter's social media video app is dying on the vine.