In 2014, Facebook made a stronger move into the world of online video marketing, an area that, up until this point was dominated by YouTube.
Analysing video marketing on YouTube
YouTube is the world’s second largest search engine (second to Google), so is without doubt the place to go when people are looking for answers to their questions, many of which are in relation to a product or service that they have purchased.
When people perform a search in Google, it is common for YouTube videos to appear on the first page. When you advertise on the platform, your brand’s message appears alongside relevant YouTube videos, giving you ultimate exposure to the right audience. YouTube attracts slower but longer gains in views, while music, sport and gaming are the platform’s top genres.
YouTube also has excellent SEO, while it also provides more capabilities to build your audience over time. As video continues to dominate the world of marketing, it makes sense to consider advertising on this platform.
Let’s now take a look at video marketing on Facebook…
With 1.9 billion monthly users and counting, Facebook has the largest and most advanced segmentation users. It is easy to target audiences very specifically as we have all entered our private data into the site, including our interests, hobbies and activities.
Over the years, Facebook has refined and improved its campaign targeting capabilities, and today it is so easy to access video via mobile and tablet apps. People are exposed to countless videos as they browse through their feeds (though incidentally, not intentionally), and many of these videos are consumed without audio. As such, your video content needs to be visually stunning and feature subtitles underneath or the right props and actions.
Facebook video drives quick views and engagement, but attracts shorter, shallow and amateur videos, unlike YouTube which rewards longer, in-depth and professional videos.
So where should you run ads?
The answer to this question largely depends on what you are trying to achieve from your video advertising campaigns. While Facebook favours quantity, YouTube is all about quality. However, your budget will go much further on Facebook as its CPM is much cheaper than YouTube’s.
That being said, a number of experiments have found that views on YouTube last much longer than on Facebook. Also, YouTube is ideal if you are seeking a great revenue share and great SEO integration. The platform also offers ID protection and full access to your audience. Long-term discoverability is also built into the platform, which helps video views grow over time.
However if you are looking to improve brand awareness then Facebook may be the better option. Facebook also favours native advertising whilst offering access to an engaged, broader audience.
That being said, there is no revenue share on Facebook and no content ID to protect your videos from content thieves. Content search is also very poor and there is low long-term discoverability.
Both platforms provide performance data showing how your videos are consumed and information such as where users stopped viewing or where they have clicked through.
Finally, it should be noted that both platforms can be viewed as complementary of one another rather than head-to-head competitors. As such, since both offer their own unique benefits, it may be wise to take advantage of both.
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