Marketers are all aflutter about Facebook's potential for video marketing, especially after the social media giant's announcement that it was now totaling 4 billion video views each day—after hitting the 3 billion views-per-day milestone in January.
The rapid growth of Facebook's video viewership has led many to question whether the social media giant will soon surpass (and perhaps even overwhelm) the current leader in online video, YouTube.
Facebook's Offerings
Facebook may be pleased to have such a large number of daily video views, but are they really even that valuable? A large contributor to Facebook's view count is the introduction of autoplay: a video will begin playing on mute the moment it appears in an individual's newsfeed.
Facebook counts a video as "viewed" when it plays for three seconds in a newsfeed, regardless of whether that person chose to un-mute it. So while Facebook can tout that it has achieved the milestone of 4 billion video views a day, the truth is that the number of videos viewed in a meaningful way is actually much lower.
Facebook doesn't necessarily want marketers to think of that—the company's reporting doesn't break down how many video views come from auto-play, or what the site's average video view length is (though this information is available to page owners who dive into their analytics). But by broadcasting impressive numbers that signal rapid growth, Facebook can charge advertisers with higher rates to get their premium advertising content to appear in someone's newsfeed.
Of course, Facebook does offer unique advantages over its competition that may be well worth the cost for video marketers. Specifically, Facebook's extensive targeting options allow marketers to reach very niche groups, allowing videos to more effectively reach the exact desired target audience (something YouTube and Google are not able to provide). And when content is properly packaged and curated for Facebook's more easily distracted audience, engagement can quickly exceed that provided by YouTube.
Facebook has made it quite clear that it intends to make video the medium of choice on its platform. Analysis by Socialbakers found that natively embedded videos have the highest distribution rate of any type of post on Facebook, which is good news for brands eager to get the greatest reach without needing to promote every post.
