NEW YORK: Two thirds of US marketers regard social media platforms as the most important partners in any digital video campaign, new research has shown.

Trusted Media Brands asked more than 300 agency and client-side marketers how and where they plan to spend their video advertising dollars in coming months and found that client-side marketers preferred social platforms such as Facebook or Snapchat (65%) to video platforms like YouTube or Vevo (55%).

Agencies on the other hand leant towards video platforms (62%) rather than social (51%).

But for both sets of marketers, the other options – including video demand side platforms (34% of all respondents), full-episode players (28%), ad networks (28%) and publishers – were much further down the list.

Further, 40% of respondents believed that Facebook should set the standard for the future of the video industry.

"The big news is that Facebook, which has most of its traffic on mobile, has pulled a real coup," said Rich Sutton, chief revenue officer at Trusted Media Brands.

"In a very short period of time, it has video buyers saying that Facebook is the most important video platform, not just social platform," he told Mobile Marketer.

The Future of Digital Video study also revealed a high level of interest in advertising in live-stream video, where Facebook Live and YouTube Live lead the field in terms of marketer consideration.

Fully 89% of respondents said they were considering using some sort of live-stream video advertising in the next six months, although the majority of them were in the "might" camp; only 18% were definitely intending to use live stream.

Sutton noted that Facebook had come a long way in a short time, adding that "Facebook Live and in-feed video seem to be catalysts in that growth"; he expected the social media giant would overtake YouTube as the video advertising platform of choice.

The study also reported that short-form video is most popular and that the use of micro video (5 seconds or less) is likely to grow.

And budgets for digital advertising are growing, with around one third of spending being transacted programmatically.

Data sourced from Trusted Media Brands, Mobile Marketer; additional content by Warc staff