It’s been widely stated in marketing circles that 2015 will be the Year of Video Marketing, and it’s not hard to see why once you start looking at some numbers. A report from Demand Metric notes that 70 percent of marketers are now using videos in their marketing strategies. Another 82 percent of marketers indicate that video content marketing has proven to be successful. Why is video taking over? It’s a convergence of several key factors — the ubiquity of smartphones, the rise of video on social networks, the greater ease of creating good video, and the natural attraction that well-crafted moving images have over other forms of presentation.

The reasons aren’t as important as understanding the effect of video on consumers. Audiences prefer video over other forms of content, as one survey after another points out. While many businesses are finding great success with longer videos (three to five minutes, or even the ten to twenty minute or longer videos some use), the short-form video is getting much greater play with the popularity of Vine, Instagram, and Facebook.

Of course, video isn’t just created and shared by companies — the enormous growth in video sharing is fueled by user-generated video, and the rise of influencers is the ultimate expression of that. User-generated videos beat out company-created videos in terms of generating responses.

The power of video for marketers is also driven by the sophisticated analytics and attribution that’s possible these days, and those tools are improving with each passing month. Marketers can get deep analytics that show not just views, but analyze retention and how much videos contribute to lead generation and revenue.

The power of video is transforming the entire approach to marketing, especially as consumers begin to wield that power. Influencers are a key part of many marketing campaigns because of their reach (with audiences in the millions or even tens of millions) and their ability to drive consumer actions. When an influencer you follow tells you something is cool, then you are certainly going to check it out. Of course, that ability to influence comes with a cost — the loss of direct control marketers may be used to. Brands who are flexible enough, and confident enough, to work with influencers are finding great benefits. It’s not the marketing campaign of days gone by when you controlled every last thing about the content and strategy. That loosening of control is leading to a great flowering of creativity among consumers and influencers, who are taking brands further than they ever could have gotten on their own.

The rise of livestreaming is a perfect example. Twitch draws over 100 million viewers a month, most of whom are watching people play games. Why Because it’s fun to watch, and the top streamers are funny and engaging and educational as well as exciting. Yet the games that are being played are not being tightly controlled by the publishers — the savvier publishers realize the vast value they gain by letting everyone play and share with others the joy of playing games. Nintendo’s attempts to control the sharing of its games have only resulted in fewer of its games being shared, and the company should reconsider its approach.

“Marketing is no longer about the stuff that you make, but the stories you tell,” Seth Godin noted. And video lets you tell stories fast with great impact. That’s why Facebook has spent so much time and effort refining its video offerings, and it’s getting tremendous results as it battles YouTube for the leadership in video viewing. Platforms will continue to evolve and new ones will appear, and the market share of each will shift. But video crosses all of those barriers, as well as demographics and geography and language and culture. The simple power of the moving image transcends language and culture, when it’s most powerful. That’s why we’ll continue to see video become ever more popular and powerful as a marketing tool.

This week’s VidCon in Anaheim on July 23 through July 25 will cover all aspects of online video, and [a]listdaily will be there to cover it. Keep your eye on this space for the latest from the show.

Infographic courtesy of  HighQ.