Facebook is cementing its interest in becoming a mighty video powerhouse with the latest news of features currently being tested.
“A year or two from now, we think Facebook will be mostly video,” said Ted Zagat, Ad Product Lead at Facebook just weeks ago. His words appear to have been the not-so-subtle introduction to their newest video features in testing which were announced earlier this week.
Facebook: A Place for Video
In April of this year, Facebook announced it receives over 4 billion video views per day. To add, 25% of Facebook videos were uploaded directly into the platform in 2014, however, today those numbers have dramatically increased to 70%!
This week, Facebook has announced they are currently testing an exclusive, “dedicated place” for videos for both the website and the application. The video area consists of videos that were saved to be viewed at later moments in time, videos from friends, videos shared by Facebook Pages users like and/or follow and videos from other sources. It will be possible for videos to be discovered and shares and suggested videos will appear based on individual users’ activities, including videos they have previously viewed.
Facebook is also testing a feature allowing for a video to be viewed in a floating screen while a user uses Facebook. New Facebook video features that are already available include the impressive, interactive 360 degree video and the “saved” bookmark for viewing videos at a later time – an especially great function to benefit marketers and brands. Busy users no longer have to make the decision to skip a video but can go back to conveniently and quickly consume them later on in the day, a few days later, etc. increasing the shelf life of shared content on the social platform.
What Facebook’s Push for Videos Means for Marketers
While YouTube has been the longtime sole destination for video marketing on social media, times have changed. Facebook’s ever-expanding features and innovations in video is giving YouTube strong competition for the very first time. While advertising spends for digital video marketing on YouTube and Facebook are about the same right now, Facebook is quickly growing by leads and bounds to catch up to the video giant. Marketers are finding Facebook video advertising to be very attractive for several reasons including maybe especially the type of interaction that takes place on Facebook. Videos uploaded to Facebook tend to provide greater insights from their likes, shares and comments than the insights to be gained from likes, dislikes and comments on YouTube videos.
If Facebook plans to become “mostly video” within the next year or two, it is a hint to the sheer power of video and the importance of incorporating the medium into social media marketing and other digital marketing strategies.
