As marketers look to increase brand awareness and attract more potential consumers, turning leads into customers, 2015 will see the rise of videos to capture their attention.
Video is a very attention-grabbing medium – it’s visual and entertaining, and if done right, brands can keep consumers engaged for longer than a minute.
YouTube has historically been the champion of video views. Viewers on YouTube are able to watch movies, sports, et al, anything to do with entertainment, or educational videos. Brands have taken advantage of this and while not all brands have jumped on to the service, almost all have some video or channel on YouTube.
For brands, Facebook has also been used to reach millions of potential customers. With billions of people on Facebook daily, whose habits and interests vary immensely, brands have been able to interact and have conversations with consumers. With the rise of Facebook video, how will brands use the service?
According to an article on Digiday, “native Facebook videos have performed increasingly well for brands, while posts from Facebook pages featuring YouTube videos have suffered declining engagement. As of November, native Facebook videos accrued 80 percent of total interactions on the platform’s video posts, leaving just 20 percent for YouTube and other video formats, according to social media analytics startup Socialbakers.” As this graph shows, Facebook videos are growing.
“Facebook measures views differently than YouTube, so the two stats aren’t directly comparable. Facebook, which autoplays videos in the news feed, counts three seconds of viewership as a view. And if you go back and watch that video again, that’s another view. For YouTube to register a view, you need to actively click (or tap) play on a video. And if you return to it later (on the same connection), YouTube won’t add to the video’s total view count.”
Brands have begun to pay attention to the new opportunity on Facebook. But will Facebook overtake YouTube? No one knows.
