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For marketing purposes, is there a business case to posting longer (> :60s in length) videos to Facebook compared to shorter (:60s or less) videos?
Hello! Thank you for your inquiry regarding short vs long video content. In short, there a number of study’s showing different opinions on this subject, however, when it comes to Facebook in general, Nielsen found that 74% of a marketing campaigns impact happens in the 10 seconds or less of watching video content. In 2016, eMarketer reported that videos between 30 and 60 seconds were faring better than those under 30 seconds. Kinetic Social tracked 2 billion social media imprints and found that 44% of videos 30-60 seconds on Facebook were viewed in their entirety, 31% videos over 2- minutes were watched in their entirety and only 26% of videos under 30 seconds long were watched in their entirety. The trends found from this research show that when it comes to video adverting on Facebook, a focus on delivering both short and long video continent in unison to achieve optimal results. Below you will find a deep dive of my findings.
METHODOLOGY
To research your request, I searched through a variety of trusted websites, media sites, a multitude of polls and case studies both independent and Facebook generated to provide you with an overview of duration markers in video content advertising, changes to Facebook's algorithms, Facebook success stories and a host of information on the subject.
OVERVIEW OF SHORT AND LONG VIDEO CONTENT ADVERTISING
Facebook commissioned Nielsen in a study campaign of 173 Brand effects for a 2014-2015 global analysis. The results showed that 74% of a marketer’s campaign impact happens within 10 seconds or less of the video content, although Nielsen believes this is regarding content viewed on mobile devices and not specific to Facebook content. Even though this study shows the brand effects, it does not tell the whole story.
In 2016 eMarketer published a report showing that video content between 30 and 60 seconds was faring better than those under 30 seconds. A study by Kinetic Social, tracking 2 billion social imprints including video showed that 44% of 30-60 second video ads on Facebook were viewed in their entirety. Ads under 30 seconds only had a completion viewership of 26%. This biggest revelation was in longer videos. Video ads that were 2-minutes or longer showed a 31% completion rate.
When it comes to Facebook, studies have shown that audiences' engagement on Facebook is greater with 1-minute long videos. One company found that 95% of content watchers on Facebook, viewed their video in mute. This has prompted them to add subtitles.
When discussing a Direct response, a study of ad content provided for gaming platforms showed that even though most companies provided content between 16-30 seconds in duration, the conversion rates on Facebook were only slightly higher than 21-25 seconds and 31- 35-second ads.
When it comes to the e-commerce market, the 16-20 second video advertisement now only accounts for about 20% of ad content while 42% of the content was from advertisement running 21-35 seconds. While the conversion rates related to shorter advertisements were higher, they were minimal and did not show a significant amount in aggregate.
On News Whip, they had analyzed the top 10 shared videos on Facebook in 2015 to gauge the average length of a successful video and found they averaged from 24-90 seconds. To see if the trend has changed, they looked into the first month of 2017. This showed that out of the top 10 most watched on Facebook, the shortest non-live video was 26 seconds and the longest was 2:53 minutes and a majority of the top 10 were at just above 60 sec.
An article on Hubspot shows Facebooks ideal social media content – “Status updates: 63,206-character maximum | Ideal length is 40 characters; Video: 120-minute maximum | Ideal length is two minutes.” The ideal length of 2 minutes is calculated by engagement. According to research conducted by Wistia, "two minutes is the "sweet spot" -- even a minute longer than that shows a significant drop in viewership. Engagement is steady up to [two] minutes, meaning that a 90-second video will hold a viewer's attention as much as a 30-second video, the research reads," so "if you're making short videos, you don't need to stress about the difference of a few seconds. Just keep it under [two] minutes."
In an article related to the Facebooks 2017 video content, researchers looked at over 500 Facebook pages video content and found they have a combined 180 million likes and had over 12,000 videos during the study. The study found that 96.9% of these videos were native to Facebook and reached 16.7% of the average total audience. The native videos also engage 4.9% of the people reached. This is a large increase from a year before when only 79.6% of the videos were native to Facebook.
In relation to length, it is reported that “the average length of a video published in the first quarter was 3 minutes and 48 seconds, but the average time watched was only 10 seconds or only 4% of the full video length. The last time we looked at these numbers, the average video length was only 55 seconds while the average time watched was at 18 seconds. The latest figures show that pages now publish much longer videos (a length increase of 315%), while users watch less (a 44% decrease)”.
The Huffington Post featured some pros and cons related short and long form content. By analyzing a comparison of content provided by similar short and long-form videos delivered from the same major national advertiser, we see that 2/3 of viewers dropped off after 10 seconds and 16% completed watching the video of a standard 30-second advertisement. When we compared this to a two-and-a-half-minute video, it took 39 seconds for 2/3 of viewers to drop off and 13% completed watching the video. “The long-form video delivered significantly more attention to more people than the shorter ad”. This study also found that 93% of all videos were auto played in mute while only 7% had the click to add sound activated, which was a 68% decrease from their previous study.
Some Facebook findings showed that only 29% of all views were considered “30-second views,” that are defined by Facebook as the number of total views lasting 30 seconds or 97% of the content of the video, whichever comes first and 16% of these videos were played without enabling sound.
FACEBOOK NEWS FEED ALGORITHMS 2017
The most recent algorithm changes at Facebook are related to the roll out of “Trending News with its own navigational link in the mobile app’s main navigation. The Trending News section will feature a list of news topics with an image, headline, the major news outlet reporting it, and the number of sources available on the topic. The navigation link is now available on iOS and is currently testing on Android. Facebook is also testing space that features the top 3 trending news stories within the News Feed itself”.
Also, Facebook announced it will prioritize websites that have faster loading times in the News Feed. “Users have expressed frustration after clicking on a link on Facebook only to find themselves waiting for a site or page to properly load. Studies show that as many as 40% of users abandon the website after a three-second delay. Companies, businesses, and content sites would be wise to invest in faster loading pages on their sites. Not only will Google penalize slow sites, but now Facebook will as well”.
Facebook is also slowly and quietly testing a new feature known as “Explore Feed,” that will help Facebook users discover content that is outside of the network of friends and Pages they already follow. This feature is being slowly rolled out but is coming to some users. Facebook states, “The “Explore Feed” can be found in the menu navigation (which includes Weather, Sports, Find Wi-Fi, and more). Facebook intends to keep users on site or in the app when looking for content, instead of turning to Google or other apps. Content found in “Explore Feed” is similar to the content from your friends and followed Pages”.
Facebook has announced their new update will bury links to low-quality sites that come from posts or even Facebook ads. Facebook’s definition of a low-quality site is one “containing little substantive content, and that is covered in disruptive, shocking or malicious ads”.
Facebook's new test will allow some users to subscribe to Topics they may be interested in. “In the News Feed, users may see a carousel of topics they can subscribe to. By subscribing to a Topic, the user will be exposed to more Pages and posts than those they ordinarily follow and interact with. Facebook intends to gauge whether this update helps users engage with posts they are interested in while also being exposed to new ideas counter to their own beliefs, interests, or politics. Should the test prove to confuse or annoy users, however, it’s possible this update never reaches all Facebook users”.
FACEBOOK ADVERTISING CHANGES
In 2017, Facebook announced they were making some changes to how video completion rates are counted in relation to News Feed. They are tabulating the percentage of the video watched and are using this data to feed related type content. They feel that by percentage watched, they can tell if a user is interested in certain content. The company stated, “If you watch most or all of a video, that tells us that you found the video to be compelling — and we know that completing a longer video is a bigger commitment than completing a shorter one. As we continue to understand how our community consumes video, we’ve realized that we should, therefore, weigh percent completion more heavily the longer a video is, to avoid penalizing longer videos.
In March, Facebook reportedly signed a deal with video creators such as Group Nine Media Vox Media, BuzzFeed, ATTN along with others to create long and short-form videos with ad breaks. These shows are slated to last 20-30 minutes for scripted shows and 5-10 minutes for unscripted episodes. This deal will help Facebook attract more money from advertisers. Facebook will spend up to $250,000 for shows that are long scripted and will be the property of Facebook. The shorter videos will be purchased at between $10,000 and $35,000 each and will provide the show’s creators with 55% of the revenue derived from advertising. Facebook already runs content from news publishers and recently signed a deal to feature 20 live MLB games this year.
Facebook is planning to add mid roll advertising to their video content allowing ad content to be inserted 20 seconds into a 90 second or longer video. Facebook has already tested this platform with live videos so the move to standard videos is not surprising. Facebooks VP of Partnerships had previously stated they were planning on this insert more for live videos in 2017. The revenue split related to these inserts is a 55/45 split with Facebook earning 45%, the same deal offered by YouTube.
Other changes to Facebook this year are video cover pages. Facebook announced they would be allowing uploaded video to cover pages. They are the testing phases currently. This would allow page administrators to upload videos between 20-90 seconds in duration instead of photos to their cover page.
The cover video will auto play in a continuous loop and an option to mute or unmute audio. This feature can currently be viewed on the BMW of Morristown Facebook page.
FACEBOOK SUCCESS STORIES
Bacardi launched its “We Are the Night” campaign that featured 30-60 second TV spots along with mobile friendly videos no longer than 15 seconds long containing captions for Facebook’s News Feed. There were 8 different ads featuring different content. Bacardi set out to target Facebooks millennial audience and hired Nielsen to do a Brand Effects study to determine the success of the campaign. The findings showed that Bacardi reached 92% of their target and gained 5 points in brand favorability.
The OWN channel used a series of short and long form videos delivered over both Facebook and Instagram, in a campaign to launch a new series on its network. The results of this campaign made Greenleaf the highest rated debut in the history of the network. The campaign received a 6.4 lift in female millennials via TV and Facebook ads. The lift in female millennials from Facebook ads was 1.7 points , a 10% lift in tune in intents and a 13% lift in show awareness.
DiGiorno used shot teaser videos in a Facebook and Instagram campaign targeting a broad audience of those ages 25-54 in the US with an interest in pizza. “Using facial recognition technology, DiGiorno conducted a social experiment to show (with science) that enjoyment of pizza is greatest when it’s straight from the oven. To promote this pizza social experiment, and to encourage people to enjoy DiGiorno pizza at home, the brand developed a video ad campaign for both Facebook and Instagram.”
This campaign resulted in a reach of 21 million, 6-point lift in purchase intent and an 8-point increase in ad recall.
THE HERSHEY COMPANY
The Hershey company started a multi-level optimized video campaign via Facebook and Facebook live to bring awareness to their brand and launch a new product. They started with a series of short, silent, looping video clips featuring a “poster on the wall announcing the classic evolved.” On the day of the product launch, of Hershey’s Cookie Layer Crunch bars, an 11-minute comical video was released . After the launch day, Hershey’s continued to release mobile optimized videos and short cinemographs over Facebook. The results showed that this campaign brought Hershey’s a 5-point lift in favorability, 11-point lift in brand awareness and a 20-point lift in the recall.
As you can see, from these success stories the trend when it comes to video adverting on Facebook seems to focus on delivery both short and long video continent in unison to achieve optimal results.
While Facebook shares many successful case studies, not all of them specifically address duration of the video contents as requested. I used some here that did include this issue. I am including a link to the case study page if you choose to read some more of the marketing strategy success stories here.
CONCLUSION
In conclusion, there a number of study’s showing different opinions on this subject, however, when it comes to Facebook in general, Nielsen found that 74% of a marketing campaigns impact happens in the 10 seconds or less of watching video content. In 2016, eMarketer reported that videos between 30 and 60 seconds were faring better than those under 30 seconds. Kinetic Social tracked 2 billion social media imprints and found that 44% of videos 30-60 seconds on Facebook were viewed in their entirety, 31% videos over 2- minutes were watched in their entirety and only 26% of videos under 30 seconds long were watched in their entirety. The trends found from this research show that when it comes to video adverting on Facebook a focus on delivering both short and long video continent in unison to achieve optimal results.
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