Facebook Uploaded Videos Outpace YouTube

On Facebook, videos uploaded directly to the social giant now outnumber YouTube videos posted to the site.

That’s according to new data from social analytics firm Socialbakers, which based its findings on a sample of 20,000 Facebook Pages -- of brands, media, celebrities, and entertainment companies -- over the past year.

Also, as of November, Facebook pages posting Facebook videos now outnumber Facebook pages posting YouTube videos. Facebook is better served by hosting its own videos than those uploaded to YouTube’s system. That’s because the platform that hosts a video has the privilege of monetizing that content.  

Jan Rezab, CEO of Socialbakers, said the trend does not bode well for Google’s video giant. “With a hefty portion of YouTube’s traffic coming from Facebook, this should be of concern to YouTube,” Rezab said on Tuesday. “It’s clear that on Facebook, content creators are increasingly choosing to upload video natively.”

Across channels, video is booming, and it holds huge monetization opportunities. Indeed, online video's share of global ad spend will increase from 1.9% in 2014 to 2.8% in 2017, according to ZenithOptimedia's new Advertising Expenditure forecast.

Along with Twitter, Facebook is expected to receive 33% of all mobile ad spend in 2014 — significantly above their 10% share of all digital ad spend, according to ZenithOptimedia. On a daily basis, Facebook regularly racks up more than 1 billion video views, per its own product management department.

Facebook continues to test new ways to make money off video. Most recently, the social giant began letting advertisers serve auto-play video promotions within its mobile apps as part of their app install ads.

Eyeing an even bigger share of the video pie, Facebook is reportedly developing a dedicated video platform to compete directly with Google’s YouTube unit. “We are convinced that Facebook will launch a competitor to YouTube and will attract and organize more and more user-generated video content,” Macquarie Securities analyst Ben Schachter predicted in a recent report.

Next story loading loading..