Facebook Video Views Rule - Experts Reconsidering Value of AutoPlay

As you may already know, Facebook set videos to automatically begin playing for anyone scrolling through their Newsfeed on a desktop computer. Now, more than a year later, the results are in and not surprisingly a recent study by Beet.TV shows Facebook videos receiving a BILLION more views than YouTube in August of 2014 on desktops.

That statistic feels very staggering considering YouTube has been the King of video for what feels like forever. However, how do these Facebook views really measure up to YouTube's? Co-founder of Beet.TV, Gian Fulgoni, explained it very well with this quote.

“While there's reach advantage for auto-play, there's an issue as to whether you're getting good engagement. You're getting good engagement from user-initiated (video on YouTube) by definition. If you figure how to create the video so it grabs people's attention, you may have the benefits of high reach as well as engagement.”

To AutoPlay or Not?

Historically, videos that were set to autoplay were seen as a nuisance and were bad for your overall user experience and engagement. However, Facebook has figured out a way to make autoplay work. The real question is - Is this new technique specific to Facebook or can it be translated to other platforms as well? Here's a great interview of Vivek Shah that sums up the entire concept well.

Hopefully, we've gotten you to a point over the years where you already understand and have embraced the growing importance of video marketing. Now, with proof of Facebook's successful shift to autoplay it may be time to consider video marketing on Facebook to increase brand exposure and customer engagement.