That Facebook loves video has long been clear and although it was surprising to see them get beaten to the punch by Twitter, yesterday we finally saw the Facebook embeddable video debuting, making it possible for users to embed their videos on another site. The move from the internet giant supports its huge ambition when it comes to video. Facebook has steadily been catching up with Youtube with its barrage of new video features seeing them catch up inch by inch, making Facebook more and more competitive with YouTube. Features such as proper embedding is a vital one for Facebook, effectively making it possible for users to spread their videos outside of Facebook, making Facebook one step closer to be competitive with YouTube.
Follow The Money
The new embed feature will likely please publishers, journalists and the creators of videos who will see better distribution of their content from the social network giant. Facebook has really been going after advertisers and publishers in recent times, and embeddable video will give Facebook another outlet for making money, with other speculations about auto playing videos in the pipe line, as reported by re/code the other day: “In this new test, if you don’t click on a “related video” after a certain amount of time following the end of your video (Facebook is testing different lengths), the next video in the queue will start playing on its own” A new potential monetization option this gives Facebook is pre and post roll ads on embedded videos and it wouldn’t be a huge surprise to see this being implemented in the future. Facebook also announced that they are going to start displaying ads in mobile apps alongside video through Live Rail. Facebook’s aggressive push into the video sphere is clearly not stopping anytime soon. The Information reported this week (members only link) that Facebook is pitching a new premium video product called “Anthology” to advertisers and publishers. According to the report, Facebook is working with publishers, such as Vine, The Onion and Vox Media, to produce sponsored short-form videos that has a $2 million minimum buy in. Facebook shareholders will no doubt be smiling. 
Facebook Loves Video
Yesterday at the F8 Facebook Developer Conference Facebook reaffirmed that its focus lies heavily on video. Mark Zuckerberg spoke about video as the dominant format on Facebook in the future, repeating what he said in a public question-and-answer session back in November. “Now, most of Facebook is photos. Five years ago, most of Facebook was text, and if you fast-forward five years, probably most of it is going to be video.” and the latest news from the F8 Conference clearly confirmed that. Other news regarding Facebook and video includes the support for spherical (360) video, something bound to be the precursor for a VR/Oculous Rift expansion in the future. Other news includes the development of Facebook Messenger as a platform and other tidbits. What’s clear is that the now de facto video giant is clearly targeting YouTube, already boasting 3 billion daily video views (which will no doubt be increasing a lot from now on), 65% of which are on mobile, and 53% of that traffic is driven by people sharing links on their news feed. New video API and platform for developers should make Facebook even more appealing to publishers and when they manage to let publishers monetise their videos they might be ready to take on YouTube for real. This is shaping up to be a very interesting space to watch in the next few years.
What This Means For Marketers And SMBs
So should you start embedding your facebook posts now instead of YouTube? Well maybe not quite yet, Facebook is still nowhere near YouTube when it comes to compression quality, and YouTube is the world’s 2nd largest search engine, something not to be scoffed at. But with Facebook inching its way closer and closer to YouTube in the video sphere is clearly not letting up so marketers and publishers might have more of a headache to choose in the future. What is clear that video is not going away and if you’re not producing high quality video content today you’re bound to lose out in the future. Want free video marketing tips and free video ad templates delivered straight to your inbox? Sign up to our newsletter!
