JUSTINE HERZ on 05 June, 2015 at 03:06
1) Facebook and YouTube report 4 billion video views per day on each platform.People are first encountering your video within a newsfeed surrounded by friends’ baby pictures, cat videos and general social commentary. We have approximately 3-5 seconds to entice someone to watch our video before they scroll right past it. And we’ve got to do it potentially without sound (Facebook video autoplays without sound until you click it).
2) 65% of Facebook views are now happening on mobile, and 50% of all YouTube traffic is now mobile.
Our stories not only need to be understood on small screen, but they need to be enjoyed on a small screen. This impacts how we shoot and design our videos – the types of shots, angles, supers and graphics – to maximize the limited real estate people will be watching from.
3) 1 in 3 viewers share a YouTube video after watching, and 700 YouTube videos are shared on Twitter alone every minute.
People like to share videos. They want something to share. Now, this ”1 in 3″ number is a bit misleading because the majority of those videos are not branded, however, the user behavior is there. People want to connect with content and tell their friends about it. We just need to give them something to connect with. If we make videos people love, find interesting, surprising, they’ll connect with it. And then they’ll share it.
4) Adults spend 5x more time watching online video compared to 4 years ago.
People are immersing themselves in stories they care about. When they find something they love, they not only share it, but want to watch more and more of it. If you only give someone one video to watch, they might love it, but then they’ll be forced to go somewhere else (i.e. a competitor) to watch something else like it. But if someone loves your video and you give them something else to do after watching it, you can keep their attention as long as the content is good.
5) YouTube users consumed more than 100 million hours of “how to” videos this year alone, reflecting a 70% uptick in searches for “how-to” do something compared to last year.
People want information. Last year, we produced 45 “how to” videos for Gerber answering moms’ biggest questions pertaining to childhood development and nutrition. We used search data to understand her questions and then created a separate video to answer each question. Some videos had product in them, but the majority were just giving moms the information she needed at the moment she needed it most. Video completion rates were 21x higher and social engagement was 5x higher than previous Gerber videos. Why? Because we found a user need and met it.
Sources: 2015 stats from Facebook, YouTube, Neilson, eMarketer, and MarketingLand
