More than two years after it was acquired by Twitter, Vine is still a significant player within the online video industry. At the same time, there is now ample evidence that the momentum of the six-second video capture app has slowed. Most recently, Adweek has reported data from Tubular Labs that paint a picture of Vine’s declining popularity among brands. For example, according to one of Tubular’s statistics, only 4% of the digital videos posted by 40 major brands over the past three months landed on Vine.
The brands Tubular measured shared just 113 videos on Vine between September and November. In comparison, the same brands shared nearly 2,500 videos on other platforms, including YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and Vine. Only 13 of Tubular’s 40 brands posted on Vine at all during the third quarter of 2015; by comparison, 21 of them used Vine during the first quarter of the year.
Vine’s popularity exploded in 2013, and its rising tide brought a lot of brands to its shores. Now, however, those same advertisers are eschewing the Twitter-owned app, and Adweek has a few ideas why. For starters, Vine has no advertising infrastructure, which makes it an unappealing choice compared to Instagram and Snapchat, which have both developed the ad tech they need to support their brand partners. Twitter also now seems more focused on other platforms; it is paying particular attention to Periscope, a live-streaming app it acquired in March 2015.
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Despite the downward trend, branded content on Vine still exists. Adweek cited a recent partnership between Dunkin Donuts and social media star Logan Paul, which highlights the increasingly influencer-driven nature of brand interactions on Vine. Stars like Paul, however, are becoming more platform-agnostic, and they’re developing large followings across multiple social media sites.
Vine clearly needs a face lift if it’s going to become more appealing to brands, but such changes may not be in the cards. If Twitter wants to focus its efforts elsewhere, Vine will fall into a role as a home for user-generated content. It may turn out that Vine’s window as a brand platform will be, like the runtime of its six-second videos, short-lived.
