Recently, Facebook has focused on establishing its video platform to compete with YouTube. It now boasts more than 4 billion video views per day as of April 2015, up from 1 billion in September 2014.
Videos also lead in organic reach on Facebook with 11.86% of page likes seeing a video post. Links reach 9%, photos reach 7.86% and status updates 6.12% of the total audience. Videos on Facebook are also right behind photos in terms of engagement. (Source: Locowise)
Facebook video is obviously a great marketing tool for business pages. So, what’s coming next?
New Updates to Facebook Video:
1. Pay Per View
Right now, Facebook counts a view as “3 seconds of view time.” With most of my clients, the average duration of a video view is anywhere between 10 and 15 seconds. Now, Facebook is introducing a new video ad buying format that lets you choose to pay only when viewers stick around for at least 10 seconds, versus any time a video plays for a mere 3 seconds in someone’s newsfeed. This is beneficial because it will prioritize those that are really engaging with your content and are more likely to create a conversion on your video ad or watch the video in its entirety.
2. Floating Video
Facebook is testing a new floating video feature with some users that lets you scroll through your newsfeed while you watch. The option, available only for some Facebook users currently, is accessible via an icon in the lower-right hand portion of the video. When you click the icon, the video becomes movable. The feature is only available on desktop, not mobile. For marketers worrying that their videos will get lost in the newsfeed, this is the perfect solution.
3. Priortizing Videos in Newsfeed
In a recent Facebok newsroom article, Facebook said that they will know show more videos to people who are taking action on videos similar, such as turning up the volume, making a video full screen, or pressing play, instead of just prioritizing videos in your newsfeed based on your likes, comments, and shares on videos.
Here’s what they had to say:
“Many people have told us that they enjoy watching videos in News Feed but don’t always feel inclined to like, comment or share them. For example, you may have found a video from a nonprofit you follow on Facebook to be really informative and you’re glad you saw it but it’s not something you felt inclined to like, comment on or share more broadly.
We are now taking into account more interactions with videos that we have learned indicate whether someone found that video interesting, such as choosing to turn on sound, making the video full screen, and enabling high definition. So if you turn the volume up or make the video full screen, we have updated News Feed to infer you liked the video and will show you similar videos higher up in your News Feed.”
4. GIFs
Facebook is this close to allowing business pages to post GIFs. GIFs are already able to be shared from your personal Facbeook account- just copy and paste a link to your favorite GIF in your status update and plays right in your newsfeed. Brand pages, however, are not able to share GIFs at this time. But a Facebook spokespersons recently told Adweek this:
“We built support for animated GIFs to help people express themselves in fun new ways on Facebook. Like many features that we release on Facebook, we want to ensure that this drives a great experience for people first before rolling it out more widely. While Pages cannot currently post GIFs, we are exploring ways to enable this in the future.”
Soon your marketing plan can include GIFs!
