You have your video strategy ready to go to make sure it generates results and now it’s time to consider where you want to put your resources as you distribute video. Back in January, we looked at the state of Facebook and YouTube as the dominant video platforms of the year. We gave our recommendations on which video platform to rely based on different goals your video might have because Facebook and YouTube favor different objectives. Now, there’s another point of contention that is making us come back and visit the video platform question, and it’s something that we want to break down for you. It’s called native video.
What is native video anyway?
The definition of native video is a lot more intuitive than it might seem. According to Falcon Social’s Matthew Klein, native video is “…videos that are uploaded to or created on social networks and played in-feed, as opposed to links to videos hosted on other sites.”
This means that instead of just posting a YouTube or Vimeo link to a video across your Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram profiles, you would just directly upload them onto every individual platform.
And what does the rise of native video mean to you?
Klein sums it up like this:
For brands, the new emphasis on native video will likely mean the end of youtube as the central hub for all branded video content. Facebook and Twitter are making it worthwhile for companies to post content on those channels directly, and it’s not likely that will change in the near future.
And the overall trend towards video is here to stay as well. [B]rands, if they haven’t done so already, are going to have to shift more and more resources to producing engaging, quality video.
This is great news for those of who us who are strong proponents of storytelling as the best way to engage. Once you have these assets, it’s just a matter of capitalizing on the best platforms to host it to get the full benefits of sharing and engagement.
Listen up, paid media users: Advertisers really like native video ads
When we Google the concept of native video, most of the results that come up for native video related to native video advertising formats. Native video and native video ads both contain native video so on the surface they relate to the same thing. But native video ads are performing a lot better than the disruptive pre-roll video ads you come across a lot when wanting to watch your favorite clips on YouTube.Companies who want to increase their levels of conversion and awareness really should pay attention to native video advertising. Why?
Ad blocking is becoming an even more formidable obstacle for advertisers right now. Ask yourself: do you use an ad blocker on any of your web browsers on your home or work computers? If the answer’s yes, and you happen to be in the US, you’re part of the projected 86.6 million people projected to being using ad blockers on both desktop and mobile this year by eMarketer. This, according to this excerpt from the report by eMarketer’s Paul Verna, heightens the sense of urgency for current and future video marketers:
Ad blocking is a detriment to the entire advertising ecosystem, affecting mostly publishers, but also marketers, agencies and others whose businesses depend on ad revenue…The best way for the industry to tackle this problem is to deliver compelling ad experiences that consumers won’t want to block.
Plus, for publishers, native video ads have a higher ROI: “…video advertising has been responsible for the highest source of revenue. With video ad views growing at a 32 percent rate year-over-year (IAB/FreeWheel’s Video Monetization Report), publishers recognized this medium as a highly valuable way to monetize online traffic.”
Should I upload native directly to Facebook or to YouTube?
The answer’s easy albeit logic-defying in terms of the norm for how videos are shared on Facebook: you should directly upload native video directly to YouTube. We already know that videos are becoming the bulk of our Facebook newsfeeds. But, we’ve got the numbers to prove why uploading videos onto Facebook is much more advantageous than posting YouTube links.
Since Facebook is such a fundamental portal
…crucially for brands that are looking for ways to connect with their fans on Facebook, natively posted videos are getting better organic reach than posts featuring videos that are hosted elsewhere, Ad Age reported.
A study by social media analytics firm Quintly of 167,000 Facebook users throughout 2016 (6.2 million posts from those accounts were part of the analysis) came to one conclusion: “[n]ative video has not only taken over Facebook, it has done so by design.”
Not only that, but the number speak for themselves. Native Facebook videos performed 109% better than YouTube videos. In December 2016 alone, that outperformance percentage was 186%.
Looking for even more drastic numbers? Let’s take a look at the share rates from the study: In December 2016, the study “…found that FB native videos held a 1055 percent higher share rate than YouTube videos.”
Thus, Quintly Digital Communications Manager Nils Hermann stated: “Given how popular YouTube remains on its own outside of Facebook, these numbers raised a few eyebrows!”
As this chart states, Facebook native videos have triple the shares of YouTube videos, Vimeo links on newsfeeds have more or less been rendered insignificant at only 2%, and everything else besides Facebook, Twitter, and Vimeo is at 7%:
What publishing native video to Facebook means for you
Presently, 53% of all Facebook profiles around the world share video on their news feeds. The growth of native video as presence on Facebook profiles is even more significant for those Facebook pages with more than 10 million followers: this segment of Facebook pages saw an increase in the use of native videos on Facebook of 35% in the last half of 2016. Couple that with the new Facebook app coming to Apple and Samsung TV, Facebook video is going to become more and more prevalent. While it’s not sure whether Facebook will completely replace other video formats and shares from those platforms, the greater presence of video on our Facebook news feeds isn’t some fad-it will be something that will be even more top of mind in the future.
How can I jump on the native video bandwagon?
Want to follow this latest #StarkTip? We’ve got all the tools you need to help you out, and getting a free quote or any other type of consultation is super easy: just click on this link and you’ll be well on the road to the 84%.