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Yup. Vertical video on Amazon is now a thing for influencers to use to share product reviews and for shoppers to view. And Amazon appears to be making changes to make vertical Amazon videos look better. Let’s look at what’s what.
Here’s how horizontal videos of mine display:
And on product pages, they look like this. That especially works well when there are several videos in that spot. One horizontal video after another. All part of the Amazon Influencer Program.
And now, when I’m the only video for a product, it might even take up the whole page side to side.
Enter vertical video
And now I can upload vertical videos – which certainly have been made popular by TikTok and other platforms. Vertical videos are really not considered mistakes anymore. They used to be. “Hold the phone horizontally already,” people were reminded when shooting video.
And then once it uploads…
The problem with that currently is, though, that the auto thumbnails. When Amazon first allowed these the framing was horrible as everything was optimized for horizontal. See how the middle thumbnail focuses on my bald head.
In fact, most of them look like this when it’s me talking to the camera. What’s actually really frustrating here is that when I look at the thumbnail in the back end (below), it looks great. But since it’s vertical, the public thumbnail currently won’t render like that.
Now, Amazon is optimizing better. Here’s a look at my storefront and you can see it will show vertical and horizontal videos decently:
And then here’s an example of an actual vertical upload next to horizontal ones.
And then on the product page, it’s across the entire screen but shows the vertical version well too:
Recording vertical video
To shoot vertical video with this camera I record in Restream, which is a livestreaming and recording studio that allows me to change the dimensions of my video before I record it. Super easy to use and that ensures I get the framing – at least for the video – that I want to.
When in focus, those thumbnails work, too. Here’s an example of three products where it did:
So vertical videos on Amazon are a thing, and it’s getting better and better. That leads me to the question of: When should I use vertical and when should I use horizontal video for my product reviews? I will likely take that on a case-by-case basis and see which one works best for the product at hand.