Chart courtesy of Mixpo
YouTube has reigned as king of online video for nearly a decade. If you wanted to distribute a video, you uploaded it to YouTube. Conversely, when you wanted to send a message to friends and family, you opened Facebook. Nowadays, that’s changed. Video isn’t just about YouTube anymore.
Apparently recognizing that video is the fastest growing format on the Internet, Facebook is muscling in on YouTube’s turf. Facebook has greatly improved its video functionality, with a new Videos Tab and Featured Video module. Its embedded video player allows users to add videos to their websites.
Facebook witnessed a 91 percent jump in video views per person from January 2014 to January 2015, compared to a 9.9 percent drop for YouTube, according to research by Mixpo. Last year, it surpassed YouTube in number of desktop videos per person and matched it in overall number of desktop videos viewed.
Advertisers are starting to like Facebook videos. Last year, more brands ran video ad campaigns on YouTube than on Facebook – 77.8 percent to 63 percent. This year more plan to advertise on Facebook than YouTube – 87 percent compared to 81 percent.
Is Facebook the New Video King?
What does that mean for marketers? Is Facebook is the new YouTube?
Not quite. YouTube has over 1 billion users, and viewers spend plenty of time watching videos on the network. It’s also the second largest search engine after Google. Uploading videos to YouTube – and including keywords in video titles, descriptions and tags in order for viewers to find them through search — remains a superb marketing approach. .
Still, marketers may wish to consider Facebook’s video options. Adding video to the mix of text, links and photos can increase the power of your social media marketing.
Native Facebook videos achieve greater reach than any other type of post, according to Socialbakers research. Photos are the most common type of post and the most frequently promoted. But they are actually the least effective in increasing organic reach.
Chart courtesy of Socialbakers
An Analytics Advantage
Facebook’s robust analytics allows marketers and advertisers to easily target specific consumer groups. Mixpo calls it the “people-based advantage” or the ability to use individual user IDs for targeting and attribution, without having to actually provide the user data to the advertisers.
Some of the key advantages to this approach are:
• Retargeting that works across devices, without depending on third-party cookies that expire or are deleted.
• Persistent behavioral data at the individual level from inside and outside of Facebook that drives more effective lookalike modeling.
• True attribution based on view through and/or click through — even in mobile, including mobile apps.
• No personally identifiable information created or passed to the advertiser, eliminating liability for privacy protection.
“When you have that much known information, tied to analytics and an ad server, you can start doing messaging in a way no one’s ever done before,” Jonathan Nelson, CEO of Omnicon Digital told Adweek. “That’s marketing nirvana.”
Bottom Line: Savvy marketers may wish to consider Facebook videos. Facebook’s enhanced video capabilities, large user base, and wealth of data on users offer substantial advantages, and research indicates that video posts tend to be shared more frequently. Although YouTube remains important, Facebook delivers major marketing advantages.
William J. Comcowich founded and served as CEO of CyberAlert LLC, the predecessor of Glean.info. He is currently serving as Interim CEO and member of the Board of Directors. Glean.info provides customized media monitoring, media measurement and analytics solutions across all types of traditional and social media.
