Digital advertising continues to impress big brands and content marketers alike. This year, the number of top brands focusing their advertising strategies on social platforms continues to increase. In particular, the number of advertisers and big brands employing mobile apps, as well as the number of advertisers utilizing video content are also seeing major growth.

When it comes to choosing a media type for your advertising campaign, advertising on social platforms is by far your most cost-effective option. As you can see in this graphic from Moz.com, advertising through LinkedIn, Facebook, and Google AdWords is a fraction of the cost to reach 1000 people as using media types like Cable TV, Radio, Newspaper and Magazine, some of those reaching upwards of $20 and $30. Today, customers spend vast amounts of time on social networks; having conversations, sharing their experiences, and voicing their needs and wants. Because these platforms offer both a lower-cost advertising solution and platforms for targeting individual people, advertisers should focus on digital advertising as they begin their 2016 ad campaign planning.

If data promoting the cost-effectiveness of digital advertising in comparison to other traditional media isn’t enough to win you over, maybe this will. We’ve all seen McDonalds campaigning on Facebook, Coca-Cola gabbing it up on Twitter, and Nike taking the spotlight on Instagram. Well these companies aren’t the only big brands in love with digital advertising. According to a recent study by Morrison Foerster, way back in 2013 89 of the Top 100 Most Valuable Global Brands had already launched at least one mobile app for their brand. In North America, 42% of B2C brands are using mobile apps to market. In addition, over 50% of companies plan to have ten or more enterprise apps by 2018. As you can see, this mobile app thing isn’t just a trend. Big brands everywhere are onboard and the data speaks for itself.

Finally, our discussion on digital advertising doesn’t end with big brands. The opportunities digital advertising allows is vast and ever-more engaging. One such opportunity is video advertising. If there’s one thing the online advertising community realized after 2015, it’s that video is the real deal. Today, 87% of online marketers use video content. In 2015, the number of digital video viewers in the United States surpassed 200 million. This explains how the number of global online video users in 2016 will reach 1.5 billion. There’s good reason for this massive adoption of video content we’re seeing today. It’s more memorable, enjoyable, and engaging than the average online content composed of text modules. The number of people who remember more after watching a video rather than just seeing text is 50% and 60% prefer watching video over reading text in general. In addition, 88% more time is spent on websites with video over those without video.

To take advantage of video, digital advertising’s new shiny object, as a way to engage users with ad content, consider launching video ads on Instagram! To learn more about advertising on Instagram check out our case study.