Over the past few years, the rise of live video content has increased dramatically and it’s showing no signs of slowing down in the upcoming years. In fact, if reports of Cisco Forecast were to be believed, 69% of all consumer-based Internet traffic will be video in 2017 and by 2020 it is expected to rise up to 80%. Another report from Business Insider estimated that by the 2020 video advertising will cover almost half of the desktop display-related spending in the US alone. If we look at these stats, it’s quite clear that video marketing will surge continuously. From this, we can draw out an inference that video is an indispensable element for running a successful digital marketing campaign. However, the question is who will win the video marketing battle? To help you figure out, we have compared and contrasted both of them below. Let’s being with Youtube first.
Youtube
You will be surprised to know that Youtube is the world’s second-largest search engine after Google. It has over 1 billion users who spend 100 million hours on videos every day. Youtube users love to watch long videos instead of short videos which are more popular on Facebook. The average length of popular Youtube videos was under 5 minutes. However, in Facebook videos having a length between 20 to 30 seconds perform the best. In addition, in Youtube “a view” is counted after 30 seconds and in Facebook “a view” is counted just after 3 seconds. Taking this information into account, we can say that Youtube is more about quality watched time.
If you want your videos to be discovered via organic search, Youtube is the right place to upload videos. While uploading the video, use targeted keywords in your title, description and tags field to get discovered both in YouTube search results and Google search.
Pros of Youtube Videos
- People searching for videos are more likely to visit Youtube than Facebook.
- Youtube videos can be easily shared to various popular social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Tumblr, Pinterest, Stumble Upon and the list goes on. However, on Facebook, videos can be shared only on Facebook.
- In Youtube, it’s quite easy to add external links to drive traffic to your website, blog or your social media page.
- When a new video is uploaded on Youtube, all the subscribers of that channel get a notification.
Since Facebook introduced video marketing, people have started debating on Facebook vs Youtube battle. Even some people stated that Facebook is overshadowing Youtube and will soon become the first destination for videos. Previously, in April 2015, Facebook itself announced that it got 4 billion views per day on the platform. And, in a short span of 6 months, this figure becomes almost double. In October, it reached 8 billion daily views. This turned investors to set their eyes on Facebook video advertising.
Pros of Facebook Videos
- In Facebook, you can tag your friends in the videos just like you do in the pics. Once you finish the tagging, the video will start appearing on their news feed.
- Facebook videos can go viral quickly than Youtube videos and the reason behind this its 1.79 billion monthly active users.
Cons of Facebook Videos
- To be very frank, there is no such thing as cons. when it comes to Facebook videos. And, this is the reason why it’s a strong competitor of Youtube. However, if you don’t abide by its algorithm and upload unoptimized videos, it will punish you by not showing your video to a wide audience.
By and large, both Youtube and Facebook video marketing have their own benefits. If you want to bring your video in front of humongous eyeballs, you can go for Facebook. However, if you want to turn up for quality watched time, you may lean towards Youtube.