14 DAY TRIAL // A study by the Ampere Analysis media research and analytics subscription service shows how Facebook has delivered two trillion video views in 2015, closely behind market leader YouTube, which has three trillion views in the same period.
Surveying 10,000 EU and North American consumers, Ampere put together a report that could spell trouble for YouTube in the long run.
Not only is Facebook getting closer to YouTube's total delivery numbers, the social network actually has more active users viewing videos, and not random Internet users, but registered people with data on hand which can be used in targeted ads.
Facebook has 1.4 billion active users, compared to YouTube's 1.3 billion
Facebook's dedication to its video platform seems to be paying up, even if to be fair some of the numbers are skewed in Facebook’s favor, mainly because the network regards a 3-seconds playback with mute enabled as a "video view," which in most cases, is not.
Regardless of this small detail, advertisers seem to value Facebook more than YouTube, being willing to pay $0.73 / €0.66 per MAU (Monthly Active User) on Facebook compared to only $0.28 / €0.25 per MAU on YouTube.
And the most shocking detail is that Facebook will charge advertisers after 3 seconds of the video are played, even muted, in an environment where most users still have their auto-play feature enabled.
Facebook charges more for less, but actually delivers better
Comparing this snippet of information with the fact that YouTube charges advertisers only after users view 30 seconds of the video, only goes to show how much businesses value the ability to deliver the right ads for the right kind of users.
Since Facebook is also more prevalent in the mobile market, where YouTube is a rare sight, this only goes to grow Facebook's reputation as a reliable ad delivery platform, even if feature-wise it is still long behind YouTube, with no support for pre-roll or overlaid ads.
