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Facebook Video Viewer Measurements: More Smoke and Mirrors Than Metrics

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Facebook’s Nightmare Year

2018 marches on with more measurement and trust issues for Facebook. The latest is a lawsuit over claims of false metrics related to video views. Observers say this masked a deeper, strategic dishonesty by Facebook—that advertisers were mislead, bad marketing decisions were made, journalists lost jobs.

Pivot to Video

“It will probably be all video,” announced a Facebook executive to a Fortune conference in June 2016, a prediction that got wide coverage. Zuckerberg said “Five years to all video,” just two months earlier, calling it “a golden age of video” in an interview with BuzzFeed News. Thus began a cycle of re-strategizing and layoffs, reports Nieman Lab for Journalism at Harvard.

“In 2017 alone, MTV News, Vocativ, Sports Illustrated, the Huffington Post, Fox Sports, Vice, and Mic have all pivoted to video, leaning on the euphemism to explain why they’re firing teams of writers and editors.” – Contently, 8/31/2017.

Michael Stelzner, founder and CEO at Social Media Examiner explains why they’ve decided to abandon Facebook video. “After analyzing the data, after looking at what the retention time is…we came to the sad conclusion that hardly anyone is actually watching our videos (on Facebook)…the metrics are very deceptive.”

Long form content doesn’t have a home on Facebook, Stelzner concludes. “See you over on YouTube.”

Michael Stelzner

Hear his data-backed explanation here.

 

New From Facebook: Video Enhancements in Both Production and Reporting

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New Facebook video enhancements to know about now:

  1. The first change addresses the process of getting a stream set up and putting it in front of the widest possible audience.

Check out the details:

  • Crossposting Live video feature to reach broader audiences;
  • Persistent stream key for production teams; and
  • Rewind capability of live footage now being tested

To read more from Social Media Marketing, click here.

2. The second change introduces enhancements to the video retention graph available to Pages in Video Insights. It also addresses a long-awaited fix to inaccurate video metrics, from watch-time to organic reach, completion rates, and engagement counts on videos longer than two minutes. (Related: The Travel Vertical, 9/25/2016)

What’s cool?

  • Zoom Chart to get a closer look at the data, so you can better visualize the engagement throughout the video to see how key moments affected viewership.
  • Follower versus Non-Follower viewer counts.

To read more from Facebook, click here.

 

 

When We’re Not Looking: Keeping Up with Facebook’s Video Strategies

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In case you missed a couple of things that are new with Facebook and video this summer. On the late July earnings call, video was the reason given for the second quarter surge of 47 percent in ad revenue to nearly $9.2 billion. What’s driving the latest strategies?

  1. Six second ads are coming. Facebook is refining its video ad products as part of a broader overhaul of the platform. Why? Because “More time watching video means less time scrolling through the News Feed, and fewer opportunities for ad impressions along the way,” explains AdAge. Read more here.
  2. No more mute video ads. Volume is up, sound is on automatically. “Facebook was previously enthusiastic about the potential for silent video, teaching brands to create for a News Feed where videos scroll by on mute and providing tools for automatic captions.” Snapchat and Instagram Stories changed all that. Read more from AdAge here.

 

Facebook is a Video Marketing Game Changer

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Facebook is testing mid-roll ads for videos as short as 90 seconds. Have they cracked a newer, mobile-first form of video viewing that will be irresistible to media and advertising partners?Find out why Contently is suggesting, “If anyone is going to change digital video and advertising, it’s Facebook.”

Facebook video is unlike TV, digital video, and other formats that advertisers are already comfortable with in almost every way.

Read the article “Facebook may have just ushered in a new era for mobile video” found here.


Facebook is Changing How it Ranks Videos and Posts in News Feed

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Here’s a good question and a really unhelpful answer.

Q: How long should a video on Facebook be?

A: “The best length for a video is whatever length is required to tell a compelling story that engages people.”- Facebook Product Manager Abhishek Bapna and research scientist Seyoung Park, (computer vision, machine learning).

Tweaking its algorithms again last week, Facebook announced a news feed bump for longer videos that are being watched. Other factors go into Facebook’s distribution decision as well, like whether viewers turn on the sound, go fullscreen, turn on high-def, among other things. And it considers whether or not a video is live.

In related news, Facebook is also adjusting ranking algorithms to promote authentic content “that people consider genuine, and not misleading, sensational, or spammy.”

Click on these two links to read full coverage from TechCrunch on the latest changes to Facebook video feed and Facebook post promotion.

 

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Laurie Jo Miller Farr, Editor
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