Facebook’s Algorithm Changes Will Improve Relevancy Of Videos In News Feed

Last week, Facebook announced that it is making some changes to the video ranking algorithm for its News Feed.  The company has created a new video ranking system which analyzes whether or not users are watching each video and for how long, and subsequently uses this information to determine who else will see that video in their News Feed.

In the past, Facebook used metrics such as Likes and Comments to determine the popularity of a video, but the new measurement system was developed with the intention of determining exactly how captivating the content of a video is to users.  The company has also indicated that it will start showing more videos to those users who commonly press the play button when a video is displayed in their News Feed.

“People who tend to watch more video in News Feed should expect to see more videos near the top of their Feed,” explained Facebook in its recent blog post.  “Conversely, people who tend to skip over videos without watching them should expect to see fewer videos.”

While this move can be seen as a way to more effectively provide users with what they want to see in their News Feed, there is no question that there is a financial incentive as well.  Facebook is rolling out video ads to users, and this algorithm change will provide the company with a wealth of information about who will be most receptive to these ads.  This knowledge will certainly increase the power of Facebook’s video ads, thereby expanding its ad revenue potential.

However, in Facebook’s blog post, the company is focused on how these changes will improve the experience of each user by zoning in on the content that is most relevant to their interests.  “The goal of News Feed is to deliver the right stories to the right people at the right time so they don’t miss anything important and relevant to them.  Video is an important part of News Feed – in fact, twice as many people now watch videos on Facebook compared to just six months ago,” the company wrote in its June 23 blog post.  “Today, we are announcing an improvement to how we rank the videos people and Pages are uploading directly to Facebook.  Our goal is to better understand what videos people are interested in watching, so that relevant videos appear more prominently in News Feed.”

The social media giant is not ignoring the advertising element of these changes, and a couple of weeks ago it announced that users who are interested in video would see more video ads compared to image-based ads.

This algorithm change will only affect videos that are uploaded directly to Facebook, therefore it will not affect other types of video content such as YouTube.  Facebook’s blog post explains another positive outcome of this change, stating that, “This improvement means that videos that people choose to watch will reach a larger audience, while videos that people ignore will be shown to fewer people.”