Facebook trumpets video growth as it prepares to take on YouTube

YouTube may be the king of online video with more than one billion monthly viewers, but Facebook is aiming to knock Google’s service off its perch in 2015.

The company has started the year by publishing figures on how popular videos already are on the social network.

“In just one year, the number of video posts per person has increased 75% globally and 94% in the US,” explained Facebook in a blog post aimed at the kind of “creators” who’ve been building large followings on YouTube.

“With people creating, posting and interacting with more videos on Facebook, the composition of News Feed is changing. Globally, the amount of video from people and brands in News Feed has increased 3.6x year-over-year.

Since June 2014, Facebook has averaged more than 1 billion video views every day. On average, more than 50% of people who come back to Facebook every day in the US watch at least one video daily and 76% of people in the US who use Facebook say they tend to discover the videos they watch on Facebook.”

In 2014, Facebook started showing view counts on videos published directly to the social network, and while the fact that videos automatically play when scrolled to in someone’s news feed will be swelling their figures, the numbers for popular clips are nevertheless startlingly high.

One case study that’s had brands chattering is Apple’s last TV advertisement, The Song, which was published on YouTube and Facebook in mid-December. It has been watched 3.2m times on YouTube, but that pales next to its 20.9m views on Facebook.

Be wary of taking individual videos as proof that Facebook is overtaking YouTube overall, though. Taylor Swift’s end-of-2014 video for fans has been watched 4.2m times on Facebook but 14.3m times on YouTube, for example.

Facebook is keen to help brands and celebrities get more views on its service though, providing some tips in its blog post:

“As a creator, you should be conscious that people will discover your video in News Feed next to a photo from a friend or a status update from a relative. Your video needs to fit in, and it needs to be something that your audience will want to watch and share.

With the launch of auto-play and the surge in mobile use, it’s also important to focus on posting videos that grab people from the first frame of video. Shorter, timely video content tends to do well in News Feed. Keep in mind that auto-play videos play silently in News Feed until someone taps to hear sound, so videos that catch people’s attention even without sound often find success.”

Facebook is also striking deals with media companies to bring more video to its service. Just before Christmas, it partnered with American football league the NFL, which will be posting highlights, interviews and other footage on Facebook.

Meanwhile, in September, the Wall Street Journal claimed that Facebook had been encouraging some of the top stars on YouTube to test uploading their videos directly to the social network, rather than simply posting links to their YouTube clips.