Facebook Video Reaches An Impressive 3 Billion Views Per Day

Facebook has been experiencing a massive increase in video views in recent times and this impressive growth shows no signs of slowing down. During Facebook’s quarterly earnings call with investors this week, CEO Mark Zuckerberg made the remarkable statement that the social media network has now reached more than three billion video views per day. This number marks a tripling of views in the past three months, up from one billion daily views reported in September.

The report of one billion daily views prompted many digital marketers to wonder if Facebook is on its way to becoming a more popular video platform than YouTube. Certainly, the announcement that this number has tripled in the past three months will spark an increase in these discussions and predictions.

Has Facebook now surpassed YouTube? Although YouTube no longer reports daily video views, the most recent statistic that is available is four billion daily views in January 2012. There is a strong likelihood this number has grown significantly since that time. Therefore, YouTube remains the video king, at least for now. Currently, YouTube reports that more than six billion hours of video are watched monthly, which would equal approximately 12 billion minutes per day.

However, many marketing experts feel that surpassing YouTube in video views isn’t actually Facebook’s goal. Zuckerberg has stated that Facebook’s emphasis on video is a sign of the changing times. While five years ago, the majority of posts on Facebook contained text with some photos, this has since shifted to mostly photos with some video and text.

“Over the next five years, we want to continue developing features so people can share how they want,” Zuckerberg said.

So, if challenging YouTube isn’t at the top of Facebook’s agenda, why is the company placing so much focus on video? Industry insiders feel it’s clear that the social network’s video push is set to pave the way for video advertisers on the platform, and this seems to be the case. Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg has explained the increase of consumer video in the News Feed results in making video ads feel natural to users, thereby making it an effective choice for marketers.

“If there wasn’t consumer video on Facebook, video ads in your News Feed would be jarring,” said Sandberg. “As a percentage of the video you are seeing, video ads fit nicely into your experience.”

Facebook’s video growth has truly been impressive, and marketers are definitely taking note of the increasing power of video ads on the platform. In Facebook’s quarterly earnings report, Zuckerberg provided an all-encompassing statement that speaks to the social network’s impressive expansion. “We got a lot done in 2014,” he said. “Our community continues to grow and we’re making progress towards connecting the world.”