Facebook Adds Display Of Video Views As They Soar Past 1 Billion Daily

Facebook Adds Display Of Video Views As They Soar Past 1 Billion Daily

Facebook video is growing up, but it’s still early days for 

marketers trying to figure out how to use the platform to 

connect with consumers.

That’s the main takeaway from the flurry of stories today 

reacting to Facebook’s announcement that video on the 

network is getting more than 1 billion daily views and that it

 will start displaying view counts on video.

  There’s no doubt that Facebook users are watching more

 video.

 The company has been making sure of that since last 

December by serving it with audio-free autoplay in News Feeds.

 It also adjusted the News Feed algorithm in June to show

 more video to people who tend to watch a lot of video.

 And the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge alone has sparked more 

than 17 million videos that have been viewed 10 billion times 

by 440 million people between June 1 and September 1.

So it’s no surprise that Facebook reports that video views 

grew by 50% between May and June and that since June 

views are averaging more than a billion a day or that 65% of 

those views are happening on mobile devices.

But what does that mean for publishers, businesses and 

other marketers trying to reach customers on Facebook? I 

believe, it’s too early to tell what the long-term potential will 

be.

 For one thing, the auto-play video in News Feeds is still 

something of a novelty and it’s quite possible that users will

 start to tune it out. For another, producing compelling video 

is not easy or inexpensive, so marketers and publishers with

 limited budgets might stay on the sidelines.

 Video advertisers are also seeing good results, 

Facebook said in a blog post.  Helped by the use of the 

video views targeting objective, advertisers are “seeing a 

significant decrease in cost per view for their Facebook video 

ads. So in the coming weeks, we’ll extend the availability of 

videos that play automatically to more content from more 

brands in the US.”

For marketers of more limited means, there’s not much to 

report, although Facebook Page administrators have been 

given access to more detailed video analytics, which will aid

 measuring the effectiveness of campaigns.

Also, Facebook has added the ability for Pages to add calls 

to action that display at the end of videos, “allowing content

 creators to invite people to visit a destination, such as a 

website, after the video ends to learn more, watch more or 

make a purchase.”