If you're interested in Facebook video marketing, you're probably aware that the social media giant has been moving aggressively into this space. In late 2014, Marketing magazine reported that Facebook had more monthly video views than YouTube. However, some smaller businesses may still be questioning if Facebook video is a valuable advertising channel for them.

Value for Small Businesses

Companies that once advertised in phone books, on billboards or through community circulars are embracing digital advertising mediums, and Facebook's geotargeting capabilities offer a low-cost, direct response opportunity. One of the big wins for advertisers is the ability to track Facebook viewer conversions and gain insight into the number of audience views versus actual sales. Even for those viewers who don't directly convert, Facebook can track still them and serve ads at a later time. This tracking ability is essential, as Facebook is pushing measurement beyond CPM.

A 2015 survey found that even though banner ads continue to be the top ad format heading into 2016, many agencies and clients are looking to grow their ad portfolio by ramping up the usage of video formats in the coming year. According to Marketing Land, native and video were regarded as the top mobile ad formats for 2016, with 44 percent of marketers who responded to this survey citing the ability to present content in a less intrusive way as their main reason for preferring these formats. However, digital video advertising goes beyond this benefit and is a medium that marketers are just beginning to scratch the surface of. Here's how marketers can use video to introduce themselves to consumers, build trust and then ultimately get the conversion.

Digital marketing trends can be difficult to forecast day to day, let alone for an entire year. New platforms and companies are driven by the changing preferences of the continuing influx of new users. The risk of jumping onto what may be just a passing fad, however, is offset by the knowledge that failing to adapt your marketing tactics is never the strategy for customer retention. These five digital marketing trends will continue to dominate in 2016 and will be an important part of any marketing portfolio.

1. Content Marketing

Back in the day, brands merely posted a few coupons and engaged with any random audience, and then their content would practically share itself. Consumers today are savvier and more discerning than ever. Creating content with a focus on SEO (rather than actual human readers) can cause content fatigue, which makes it tough to attract, let alone convert, potential customers. Particularly when you consider the trends to follow, brands that will break through will be the ones that continue to find relevant ways to talk to their customers. KFC has done this with clever, viral videos, but it also works for smaller brands, like Intelligentsia Coffee.

Though the death of banner ads was predicted long ago, 2016 is set to defy expectations and actually be (and you'll have to pardon the expression here ) a banner year for banner ads, as display advertising is set to eclipse search advertising for the first time ever in the U.S. According to eMarketer, marketers will spend more on banner ads than any other type of digital advertising this year. In order to fully take advantage of this blockbuster year for banner ads, take a quick look at some banner ad best practices for 2016.

No Flash, No Problem

Though Flash was an essential plugin back in the early 2000s, times have changed, and Flash is getting more outdated by the second. Almost every one of the major desktop browsers has stopped natively supporting it. These browsers' users now need to manually enable the plugin to view Flash content. Though nearly one in 10 websites still uses Flash, according to Web survey site W3Techs, Ad Age reports that if all the major browsers were to disable Flash suddenly, roughly 84 percent of banners across the Internet would not be viewable on desktop browsers. To avoid issues with Flash's decline, marketers should switch over to HTML5 as soon as possible to ensure that their banner ads are viewable for all browsers in the new year.

Earlier this year, Ad Age proclaimed, "ROI Is Dead." It's certainly true that the digital age has given rise to many more tools measuring ad engagement and tracking consumer behavior, so it makes sense to create new metrics. But where to start? The sheer number of variables — Are your customers using mobile or desktop? Are they on Twitter or Instagram or Facebook? — makes for a daunting list of factors to consider. It's tough to know what really constitutes ad engagement in this complex new marketing world.

Though you may not have heard of video micro-moments before, chances are good you've probably already benefited from one. Think With Google defines micro-moments as highly specific moments of intent that lead consumers to look for answers, discover new things or make decisions online, often with a mobile device. No matter whether someone is looking for a plumber to repair a leak that just sprang that morning or is trying to get estimates for a big home improvement project, consumers are looking to their mobile devices to help them solve life's everyday problems. Video micro-moments are a great way to reach them.

If you've been on YouTube in the past several years, chances are good you know all about pre-roll ads: the brief videos that play before the content you requested. With a few notable exceptions, the vast majority of these ads are 30 seconds or shorter — but allow consumers to click a "skip ad" button after only five seconds. Though the idea of only getting five seconds to convey an incomplete message to consumers might not sound that attractive, the numbers are in, and it looks like even skipped ads are having an effect on consumers. But how is this possible?

The Power of Impressions

There's a vast gulf between clicks and impressions, and while it's tempting to just ignore inflated "impression" numbers, they're not meaningless. A recent Nielsen study commissioned by Facebook shows that you can still impact consumers who never even watch your video ad, because the single-frame impression causes a lift in brand awareness, ad recall, and purchase consideration. And viewing even just three seconds of pre-roll video without clicking or converting can create up to 47 percent of the campaign's value for ad recall, 32 percent of the value for brand awareness, and 44 percent of the value for purchase intent. Though these metrics, of course, rise dramatically for those who view an entire clip, they show that brief impressions can create significant value for marketers.

Let's face it: YouTube pre-roll ads can be pretty annoying. Sometimes it doesn't even matter how well-crafted they are. This may not be nice to say, but it's true. They interrupt user intent, are sometimes unskippable and require viewers to make additional clicks if they want to reach their desired content in a timely manner. With such negative connotations surrounding this type of advertising, it's understandable why marketers might want to skip the use of pre-roll videos and cut them from their marketing strategy. However, even though user opinions seem to be on the negative side, some surprising data shows something marketers can't ignore: These ads are actually effective!

Whether you have a small, single-location business or a growing midsize company, building brand awareness is a vital component of any marketing campaign. It can help turn one-time visitors into repeat customers who not only recognize your business as a provider of certain goods and services, but also see your brand as important in their lives.

TV, radio, and print advertising provides marketers with broad platforms capable of reaching thousands of consumers. Digital display and video help augment these marketing strategies and build brand awareness among targeted demographics with specific messages designed to increase knowledge and familiarity with the brand. These two approaches work particularly well in tandem, since one strategy alone simply isn't effective enough in today's media-saturated world.

Right now, small businesses are uniquely poised to take advantage of over-the-top ads, which, while not poised to revolutionize the TV ecosystem just yet, are certainly here to stay. These ads make use of the commercial space that's delivered over the Internet instead of through cable pipes or satellite signals, on services that don't require a pay TV package, such as HBO Now and CBS All Access, as well as some slimmed-down multichannel services like Dish's Sling TV and Sony's PlayStation Vue.