Recently, you have probably noticed more videos streaming without clicks on your Facebook page engaging you to click. This has been part of a new strategic effort by Facebook to prove to the world that it can compete with YouTube. This week, Facebook made that announcement public noting that it had reached its 1-billion-video-views-per-day. To put this in perspective, YouTube boasted about 4 Billlion views per day in 2012, so Facebook isn’t far from competing with the online video giant.
Facebook is also hoping to compete with television advertisers further convincing businesses to pull ad dollars from traditional media venues and consider placing those commercials in targeted, high-profile options on Facebook. Just like Facebook, more companies are focusing on content and inbound marketing today. Many are working their brand into more video-rich media to increase their SEO and promote it through social media further relationship building with their consumers. It’s tough to do that in one 30 second commercial but fully achieveble through ultra-targeted 60 and 120 second videos online.
In his recent blog post about the announcement, Josh Constine (@joshconstine) noted, “Sixty-five percent of Facebook’s video views are coming from mobile where Facebook’s user base is shifting, and views grew 50 percent from May to July, in part thanks to the viral ALS ice bucket challenge finding a home on Facebook. As I wrote nine months ago, video is a huge growth opportunity for Facebook, and today it finally puts its efforts there in the spotlight.”
With most of the videos being viewed on mobile devices, this shows there will be huge increases over the next few years for digital video viewing. Studies show, if companies are not working hard to implement a strong digital video strategy they may be left behind marketing to older audiences who are still watching television the old-fashioned way.
Is your business using video effectively? Would your advertising budget better benefit from rolling your commercials on Facebook versus traditional television venues? If your company would like to delve into content marketing, using video, give Bellagurl a call. We can write great scripts and content, produce high definition video and then guide you in promoting it on social media. We make marketing that matters.
