Here we go! (This data all comes from Socialbakers.)
Facebook video is growing — YouTube is not: This chart doesn’t look very dramatic but it shows that although Facebook video is still much smaller than YouTube in terms of content uploaded, four times more Facebook videos were uploaded this year than in 2014. Growth on YouTube is flat.
Brands have stopped posting YouTube videos on Facebook: Brands used to publish their YouTube videos on Facebook, now they have gone native, posting Facebook videos on Facebook. Back in 2014, YouTube was the dominant video platform on Facebook — not any more.
Facebook videos perform better on Facebook than YouTube videos do: Facebook has an autoplay feature and its algorithm prioritises videos to make up 30% of the News Feed. That is a driving factor here.
In terms of interactions, Facebook has virtually wiped out YouTube, Vimeo, Vine, and Instagram: Native Facebook videos perform exponentially better than videos from all other platforms.
News media and publishers have always been social trendsetters: Their shift away from YouTube on Facebook is even more pronounced.
The result has been the annihilation of of YouTube on Facebook for media publishers: Most Facebook interactions occur on Facebook videos, not YouTube videos.
Google likely disagrees with these statistics. It is important to remember that YouTube is still a powerhouse. Lego had a HUGE year — a 248% increase in video views since 2014.
These numbers are in the hundreds of millions. Nike has doubled its subscriber base within a year.
On YouTube, video uploads and video views continue to climb. But brand uploads are levelling out ever so slightly.
Despite all this, Facebook videos are still just 5% of all Facebook posts: Photos remain the most popular post type by a wide margin. If you want attention on Facebook, videos may be the way to go — photos are clutter on Facebook, videos are not.
Now look at the shift in promoted posts. This is were the money is. Back in 2014, YouTube links were promoted two times more than Facebook videos: A year later, things have shifted – drastically. Now Facebook videos are being promoted much more than YouTube videos.
In terms of interactions, Facebook videos are now shared more than YouTube links. This chart assumes that shares are more important than mere likes or comments.
Why are Facebook videos shared more? Because organic reach on Facebook is more than twice as big for Facebook video than YouTube. Organic reach is nearly 12% for Facebook videos, only 5% for YouTube videos.
So brands are adjusting what they post. GoPro has essentially abandoned YouTube as a source of videos for Facebook: GoPro was posting videos from both platforms simultaneously, but Facebook native videos started to gain momentum and they have completely adjusted their strategy.
BuzzFeed's response is even more extreme: It has just walked away from YouTube on Facebook.
Instagram is interesting because photos there still reign supreme. Just 5% of all posts for brands are videos, but media publishers post more than double that — 11%. If you believe that media publishers adopt new social tools faster than brands do, then this tells you something — Instagram is underutilised by brands for video.
So why aren't those Instagram numbers higher? It’s because images get higher levels of engagement for both brands and media publishers. For some reason users remain resistant to video on Instagram.
On Twitter, it's good news for YouTube — Twitter is still YouTube country! YouTube videos remain the most-commonly shared videos on Twitter.
But Twitter videos perform better than Twitter than YouTube videos do. Are you seeing a pattern here? Native formats perform better in their own environments. Social video is becoming native video.
YouTube is still massive and remains bigger than Facebook — for now. But Facebook video is growing faster. Facebook is changing the narrative: The era of “native social video” has arrived. Native video performs better on its own platform than if it is pushed onto a third party platform.
