Online video is the hottest thing on the internet right now, and everyone wants their slice of this pie, which is set to move 6 billion dollars this year in the American market alone. Most of that money is concentrated in the hands of a single player, YouTube. But there's another very powerful player eyeing this market and who has even publicly announced its intentions: Facebook.
YouTube, of course, has every reason to be worried. While its main competitors were Vimeo, Daily Motion, or MetaCafe, YouTube swam along easily and kept its hegemony without major problems. But when Facebook, which has over 1 billion users worldwide, decides to join the game… brace yourself, because things are about to get heavy.
YouTube videos are disappearing from Facebook
The first major threat was reported earlier this month: according to Social Bakers, YouTube videos are disappearing from Facebook, while the social network's native videos are growing in number and in shares. And the trend suggests this scenario won't change.
This is especially problematic because YouTube loses one of its main video distribution channels. Facebook is the main platform where ALL things are shared on the internet. Content today is social in its essence. If it doesn't spread through social networks, its reach is severely compromised. Most YouTube videos go viral socially. The site isn't the destination for most of its 1 billion monthly unique users. This is actually something YouTube is trying to change, encouraging channel subscriptions to build an audience base that consumes content directly from the source.
But this, as we know, isn't how the internet works today or how content circulates. Portals have lost audience on their homepages, blogs are constantly scrambling to build loyal audiences so they don't suffer from Facebook's algorithm changes, and so on. But the fact is that, currently, people's landing page really is Facebook, which brings together our connections, relationships, e-commerce, information, entertainment, and much more.
Facebook is becoming the place where people discover, consume, and share content on the internet, and this of course also applies to videos.
Facebook surpassed YouTube in number of views
Facebook shows the view count for its videos and according to comScore data, it surpassed YouTube by 1 billion desktop views in August in the United States. To give you an idea, 1 billion views is what Facebook gets in ONE DAY for videos today. A little over a year ago, that number was what Facebook had… IN A MONTH!
When combining all devices, Facebook still lags behind. And on mobile, the main platform for video consumption, Facebook still loses. According to Facebook itself, 65% of its video views happen on mobile, meaning winning on desktop is great, but the battle isn't fully won yet.
As we know, a lot of these views are due to autoplay. This is actually changing the way we consume online video and it's very reminiscent of TV logic: you're there flipping through channels, scrolling the timeline, when suddenly something catches your attention and you stop to watch. This has happened to me countless times since autoplay started rolling out on Facebook, 2 weeks ago. The other day I found myself watching a sausage production line for 27 precious minutes. I would never in my life go looking for that kind of content on my own. Or if I did, I'd lose motivation seeing how much time I'd have to invest in it. But on Facebook it's different, you just keep watching without even realizing it.
Another reason why videos are growing on Facebook is the algorithm change they made mid-year. In June of this year, Facebook announced a tool that detects a user's engagement level with videos on the site and shows them more videos accordingly and, of course, more video-format ads, since they'd be more receptive to this format. The more videos you watch, the more videos you'll see.
And, according to this Marketing Land article, the third reason for Facebook's surge in August is the “Ice Bucket Challenge“: from June 1st to September 1st this year, 17 million videos on the topic were shared on Facebook. This generated 10 billion views. Will Facebook be able to keep up this growth rate in the coming months without any meme to help? We'll see!
Engagement and brands
Although Facebook hasn't surpassed – YET – YouTube in number of videos published in the timeline, those posted by brands and fan pages directly on the platform show 70% more engagement than a YouTube video, according to Social Bakers. Of course, it's much easier to watch, comment on, and share a video posted directly on Facebook.
This engagement is causing brands to stop posting on YouTube in favor of Facebook. According to AdWeek, in January this year Beyoncé posted 7 videos on YouTube and 0 on Facebook. In October it was 6 on Facebook and 0 on YouTube. McDonald's, Budweiser, and other brands followed a similar path. Taking content off YouTube also means taking away audience, and audience means money. With more views and more engagement, Facebook's cost per view has dropped significantly, according to an announcement from the social network itself.
What about content creators?
Another point in YouTube's favor is that video (and general) content creators don't trust Facebook as a publishing platform: Facebook's editorial policies aren't clear, your page can be taken down overnight without much explanation, the audience you build on the social network isn't truly yours, at any moment the social network changes its algorithm and kills your content's reach, and, most importantly, Facebook doesn't pay creators for content posted there, unlike YouTube.
Funny viral videos are important and drive traffic, but they're also extremely volatile. That's why YouTube increasingly encourages quality content and the development of a network of professional creators. The most recent marketing campaign currently running in Brazil and around the world reflects this.
The Treta Has Been Planted!
The war between Facebook and YouTube in the world of video is just beginning, and we here at youPIX will be following it closely. What's your guess? Will Facebook kill YouTube? Will Facebook become the place for silly little videos while YouTube becomes the hub for quality content? What do you think will happen in this war between today's two biggest media groups?
Reproduction: Youpix
