Brief:
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Food publishers like Buzzfeed Tasty, Tastemade and Cooking Panda feature advertising directed to a U.S. audience, but people who view cooking videos on Facebook are more likely to live in other countries, according to data on fblikecheck.com, which measures user interaction on the social network.
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Among people who click on the “like” button for Tasty, the most popular cooking video series, 67% are in other countries with only 33% in the U.S, the data show. Cooking Panda gets 69% of its likes from U.S. fans, compared with 41% for Food Network and 24% for Tastemade.
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Meanwhile, BuzzFeed’s restaurant review show “Worth It” is racking up a significant audience worldwide. The web series, which has visited restaurants in Seattle, South Korea, Australia and New York City in its four seasons, has received more than 300 million views and more than 2 billion minutes of watch time, TubeFilter reported.
Insight:
The significant overseas audience for cooking videos on Facebook demonstrates its significant reach among the 2 billion users of the social network. Unfortunately, sponsors of the videos are reaching many people that can’t buy their products outside the U.S., such as yogurt brand Chobani, which advertises on Buzzfeed Tasty. Pure Leaf tea is a sponsor of Tastemade, where most of the commentators are from outside the U.S., the data show.
Ideally, advertising technology will continue to develop and allow better targeting of branded content for audience segments in different countries and demographic groups. That kind of targeting would be less wasteful for advertisers and give publishers more leeway to charge higher rates for sponsorships.
As Facebook makes a bigger push into video content with the launch of Facebook Watch, publishers are wondering if the social network still prioritizes Facebook Instant Articles, a fast-loading mobile content service started in 2015, Digiday reported. Publishers complained that the service didn’t help monetize their content, even if it kept Facebook users engaged on its platform. Facebook said in a statement that Instant Articles is working for publishers by developing audience loyalty, revenue and insights.
