Video Metrics Changing for Facebook

Facebook is making it easier for businesses to understand how users are watching the videos they post—which is big news, as video is rapidly becoming a favorite medium among consumers. 

Right now, over 75% of businesses are leveraging video in their marketing efforts, compared to 95% of consumers, who say they’ve used a video to learn more about a product or service, and 81% who’ve made a purchase because of it, according to data from Wyzowl, an informational video company. 

Facebook’s two-part revamping of its video metrics is a clear acknowledgment that marketers are demanding more specifics—and remodelers and home improvement pros stand to gain. 

The platform’s first change is its duration metrics. As a user scrolls through his or her newsfeed, they’re faced with videos that begin playing as soon as they come on screen (and stop playing as soon as they’re scrolled away from). Facebook will now report on views of those videos after 2 seconds of continuous play, 3 seconds, and finally 10 seconds, while also tracking total times a video is played and replayed. This is a departure from Facebook’s previous reporting of piecemeal viewings (i.e., someone who’s stopped the video and then returned to it later, intentionally or unintentionally). Additionally, businesses will have access to a “Video Average Watch Time” metric, but with such wide variance in watch times, even Facebook admits “it will not be the strongest metric for understanding how much of a video was consumed.” 

For that, Facebook’s implementing milestone metrics, which aim to give businesses a quick reference for better understanding viewer consumption habits. The reporting will show how often videos are being watched at the 25% mark, 50% mark, 75% mark, 95% mark, and to their completion—and that includes plays that started at those respective marks. That data will be paramount in determining the effectiveness of individual videos, as it will more accurately show who’s leaving after giving it an actual chance.