How People Are Watching Video and What This Means for Advertisers

Facebook Business

August 30, 2018

By Maria Smith, Product Management Director

At Facebook, we build for people first and this principle informs the marketing solutions and products we create. Why? Because we’ve found that ad experiences that are valuable for people, in turn deliver value for businesses as well. And that’s why people’s behaviors are the starting points for everything we build. Today, I want to share what we’ve learned about how people engage with video across platforms, how we’ve used these insights to inform products and how marketers can leverage these insights to build more effective video ad campaigns.

Why people watch changes how they watch

Think about how you engage with video on and off mobile throughout the day. What you want to achieve when watching a video of your friend’s vacation on Facebook Stories is probably different from what you seek to experience watching Netflix after dinner. Video is a critical component of both experiences, but serves very different needs. Video is no longer a homogenous experience and we use video on different platforms for different reasons. Let’s take a closer look at these differences.

People’s video experiences lie on a spectrum—quick and bite-sized at one end, when they are in discovery mode throughout their day, and deliberate and longer at the other end, when there's time and attention for longer consumption. What people expect to achieve in these experiences naturally differs.

Watching Video

On the discovery side, people come to feed environments and stories to connect with friends, family, celebrities and brands. They’re looking to discover the latest and get inspired, informed or entertained. What's unique in both feed environments and stories is that people can enjoy text, photos or videos and each piece of content stands on its own. Therefore, people have the ultimate choice of what they want to engage with and for how long.

In contrast, environments such as TV and digital video platforms like Netflix or Hulu are multi-functional. People discover content but also consume content for an extended duration. For example, people discover by surfing channels on TV or OTT devices and pick a show or movie to watch for minutes or hours. We see this behavior on Facebook too. After discovering an interesting news article in News Feed, people click into the native news experience of Instant Articles for a deeper read. People discover shows in News Feed and then click into Watch to view the content for longer. In fact, when it comes to intent-based viewing, mobile has increasingly become a destination for longer consumption. According to a new Nielsen report, in the first quarter of 2018, people ages 18-34 in the US now spend 43% of their time consuming media on digital platforms (phones, tablets, computers), with around one-third of that time taking place on smartphones. Nielsen Total Audience Report, Q1 2018

Who is watching, and when they watch, impacts consumption patterns as well

It’s not just why people come to different environments that matters, it’s also how they consume, when they consume and who is doing most of that consumption. Let’s take a look at some examples that will make these differences more evident.

First, let’s look at the how and when. In environments that are meant for discovery, such as Facebook News Feed, people tune in many times a day. In contrast, visits to environments that are used for intentional viewing, such as Watch or TV, are fewer. When it comes to the average time spent with each video, there are variances too. For example, when people come to Watch for intentional viewing, they stay to watch videos for 5X longer than in News Feed, where they are in discovery mode. News Feed Ad View Duration: Facebook News Feed Video Ad View Duration and Watch List View Duration on Facebook Watch, US only, June 2018

Who is watching dramatically changes the consumption pattern as well. Age, for example, impacts how content is viewed. For video ads, we’ve found that attention on the same ad content is lower for younger people than for older people. For example for people ages 18-24, attention on an ad is about 75% of that of people 65+. Ad View Duration by Age: Facebook video data, US only, June 2018 This is also true for TV ads. A global in-home eye-tracking study found that attention to TV ads is significantly higher in people 45+ than in people ages 18-24. Attention Data by Age: Attention Study commissioned by Facebook Marketing Science by eye square, 763 participants, January 2018

Ad solutions built for the ways people watch

Consumer insights like the ones above have been instrumental in shaping ad product development on Facebook today. Let's go over two examples: in-stream ads and Instant Articles.

Our research of in-stream ads (ads that are placed in video content) showed that people have low tolerance for long ads, with much higher abandon rates for ads longer than 15 seconds. Our research also showed that interrupting content is more acceptable when there is a satisfactory ‘value exchange’ for that interruption. In other words, videos have to be long enough to warrant ads. These insights led us to limit in-stream ad length to 15 seconds and to only place in-stream ads into video content that is at least three minutes long.

Instant Articles are a native news experience on Facebook. When this product was first introduced, videos in Instant Articles worked the same way as they did in News Feed—videos auto-played when 50% of the pixels were on screen. However, our attention research showed that it takes much longer in this environment for people to notice a video as they scroll slowly through text and in fact, playing a video before people finished reading the text preceding it felt distracting to readers. We decided to test autoplaying videos when 100% of the pixels were on screen. People liked this experience better as it better reflected the slower scrolling speed in Instant Articles compared to in News Feed, giving readers the opportunity to pay attention to the video from the start. By taking a people-first approach and changing the product to be reflective of consumer behavior we improved the experience for people and advertisers.

Tailor your video ads to how people watch

Consumer insights are also valuable to help marketers create ad campaigns that are catered to the ways in which people watch video. Here are some ways to leverage information about your audience and their viewing behaviors to create more impactful campaigns.

1. Match your message to what people expect from an experience

   As we outlined above, people’s motivations and behaviors differ depending on the mode they’re in. For example, stories could be a great opportunity to feature behind-the-scenes sneak peeks or more unfiltered, raw videos whereas feed environments could be used to educate and entertain people about your brand. In-stream ads are great for longer storytelling about a new product or to reach a new audience that needs more information.

2. Build ads catered to your audience's viewing behaviors

   Given today’s limited attention spans, shorter ads work better in general—not only on mobile, but on TV too.

   On mobile however, you can tailor ads more specifically to people you’re trying to reach. For example, if you’re trying to reach young millennial women, using short, 6-second video ads may be most effective given the attention insights for this demographic. In contrast, for a brand targeting older audiences, using a slightly longer, 15-second video ad may enable you to connect with that audience more effectively. We’ve recently launched a suite of products to make the creation of short mobile-first video ads easy for advertisers.

3. Measure performance based on where your ad is shown

   Comparing how long your video ad was watched within a given environment for a given audience will help you evaluate the ad's creative quality and effectiveness. However, comparing duration (view length) across different environments and for different audiences can be misleading. It’s also important to measure business outcomes, such as online and offline conversions or brand lift, because proxy metrics, such as completion rates, are not comparable across different environments to evaluate the impact of an ad on your business results.

Discover more insights and learn how to create effective video ads.

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Strategy