Dive Brief:
- While video accounts for only 0.9% of publishers' posts on Facebook, it makes up 7.15% of reach, 5.2% of reach, and 11.1% of shares, according to the latest data from Social Flow, a social analytics provider that posts over 500,000 pieces of content monthly for publishers.
- "It's clear that media companies are increasingly turning to video to maximize their reach and audience engagement," SocialFlow CEO Jim Anderson told Adweek. "We've heard plenty of anecdotal reports of strong video performance, and now we have the data to back up the anecdotes."
- Anderson "wouldn't be surprised" if videos make up 5-10% of total post volume over the next 6-12 months, he told Ad Week.
Dive Insight:
Social Flow's latest data may provide light at the end of the tunnel for publishers on Facebook. The social media giant recently announced changes to its news feed algorithm that would emphasize posts from users' friends and family, and inherently de-emphasize posts from publishers and brands. Social Flow's report comes after it found last month that publishers' reach on Facebook was down by 42% from January 2016 to May 2016.
“Overall, we anticipate that this update may cause reach and referral traffic to decline for some Pages," Lars Backstrom, engineering director, Facebook, wrote in a blog post. For marketers and publishers, getting people to share content is now more valuable than sharing that content themselves.
Now, the latest data shows reach is up by a factor of eight, thanks to video. Video is a ripe opportunity for publishers, brands and social media platforms alike. While metrics for publishers using video on Facebook are going up, competing platforms are also making moves to bolster their offerings, from Snapchat's new API and ad partners program to Twitter's new live video button.
Right now, Facebook is pushing into live streaming video, aggressively promoting Facebook Live and making an algorithm change that prioritizes Facebook Live video over standard video when it is streaming live to give it even higher priority in news feeds. It's important to note, as Ad Week does, that the latest data from Social Flow doesn't include Facebook Live video.