The battle for video dominance: Facebook versus Youtube

Videos are now dominating the social media space as one of the preferred content formats. YouTube was the first point for video content publishing and consumption a few years ago. Research shows that over 500 of YouTube videos were shared on Facebook and about 700 of the videos were shared on Twitter every minute.

As a result, most of these growing platforms have also added video features to enable direct upload and consumption of videos. They want a piece of the pie. In 2007, Facebook launched pages and videos. Now, Facebook is fiercely battling for video dominance with YouTube with the introduction of video analytics in its Insights feature. Videos uploaded directly to Facebook get more impressions than the ones shared from YouTube or their video sites.

Businesses and managers of social media platforms are in two minds about which platform to choose to engage their target consumers. The keen decision is now between Facebook and YouTube. However, some factors must guide the selection of the better of these two platforms to upload your videos.

1. Objectives for the video production: You must have clear objectives for the video you want to produce or have produced. It may be an infomercial about your business, an advertisement for your products or services, a demonstration of your products, a documentary about your social activities, a promotion of discounts or deals, or a how-to content to educate the target audience. These objectives will guide to select either Facebook or YouTube for the broadcasting of your videos.

2. Understand the two unique platforms: Facebook enables users to connect with one another and build relationships among themselves. They share personal and public contents which are exposed to their friends or fans using their common interests and preferences. Personal or public accounts, events, and groups as well as chats can be created on Facebook. YouTube is the second largest search engine after Google and a media-sharing website. It is primarily video-sharing and broadcasting platform with channels, viewers and subscribers. You can consume contents on YouTube without logging in to the platform and can upload videos for free with you have a gmail account.

3. Demography of platform users: Since your video is meant for a target audience on Facebook or YouTube, you have to do some research to find out the demography of the users of these platforms. Know who they are, their age groupings, location and social status. Will they prefer consuming more video contents than text, images and audio formats? Make sure the platform you will select delivers more of the right audience you are targeting.

4. Number of Active Users: Know the number of users who are active on both Facebook and YouTube so you can have a clear idea of the number of viewers or eyeballs you will be reaching with your videos. Facebook is the largest social media platform with over 1.44 billion monthly active users globally, while YouTube has about one billion monthly active visitors. But you have to know which of them will deliver the highest number of the right audience.

5. Volume of video consumptions: About four billion videos are viewed every day on Facebook while YouTube has about one billion videos views the same time. Over 300 hours of videos are uploaded to YouTube every minute. More videos are uploaded to YouTube every month than the top three TV stations in the USA have produced over the past 60 years. Currently, a lot users on Facebook are sharing millions of videos with their friends and fans by uploading them directly. Facebook has more videos viewed every day while YouTube has more views per the videos uploaded every day.

6. Distribution structure: Each of the platforms have unique features which enable the distribution or sharing of videos with the platform and across other platforms. Facebook users can distribute videos by using the share, status, embed or tag features so videos can reach more people. These features power the viral spread of creative and exciting videos. YouTube also enables users to share videos to various social media platforms or embed these videos on websites, apps and blogs.

7. News Feed Algorithms: Facebook shows video or other contents to its users based on their interests, contents and topic preferences. It uses the history of contents consumed, contents similar to those consumed by their top friends and relevance of recent posts to show new videos. But YouTube suggests videos to viewers when they log in or show videos from channels they have subscribed. The difference is that Facebook videos finds the target consumers while consumers must search for their preferred videos on YouTube.

8. Engagement edge: During this year’s Super Bowl, the sponsors chose Facebook as their primary video distribution platform over YouTube. In 2014, they distributed only 12 per cent of their videos on Facebook which resulted in 30 per cent interaction rate while the 65 per cent distributed on YouTube resulted in 65 per cent interaction rate. However, in 2015, the 83 per cent of videos distributed on Facebook had 98 per cent interaction rate while 13 per cent of videos distributed on YouTube resulted in only two per cent interaction rate. Facebook delivered higher interaction rate on the videos than YouTube.

9. Screens of access: Videos on these platforms can be consumed via mobile phones, tablets, laptops, desktop computers and smart television sets. But the frequency and immediacy of consumptions vary depending on the screens. About 50 per cent of YouTube visitors and 87 per cent of Facebook active users consume contents via mobile platforms. Your targeted primary screen must inform the production parameters of your videos.

10. Commercial or advertising models: Facebook and YouTube have different models for advertising and commercialisation of contents. YouTube runs adverts or displays web banners before or below video contents, but Facebook does not advertise on the videos on their platform. YouTube can boast of quality contents from world-class producers with millions of subscribers and views to their videos who make money on their videos. YouTube has paid or subscription-based contents. Facebook is now thinking of their revenue-sharing model and courting publishers to drive their video revolution. 

The writer is a digital marketing strategist, social media coach, app developer and technology analyst.

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