By 2020, online video will account for 82% of all internet traffic in Australia. It is therefore not surprising that global tech giants are investing in and acquiring different genres of video content as they make a play to dominate online video consumption.

Facebook’s half-hearted attempt at video streaming has had its fair share of issues so far and is playing catch up in a market already dominated by other SVOD players.

After starting out as a social networking site, Facebook has grown (both organically and through acquisitions) into a major media, advertising and technology company. Its global user base of 2.2bn monthly active users makes it the largest social media platform globally and gives it an almost undisputable advantage over any competitors.

In the past decade, there’s been a massive shift of advertising expenditure from traditional media formats to online or digital formats, so much so that Google and Facebook account for nearly 70% of every A$100 spent by advertisers on digital advertising (excluding classifieds) in Australia. Improving network technology, faster internet speeds and increasing penetration of high-end smartphones have led to an explosion in the consumption of digital video – by 2020, 82% of internet traffic in Australia will be online video. It is, therefore, not surprising that tech giants are ramping up their efforts in both digital video content and digital video advertising formats. We have covered the digital video strategies of Google (YouTube) and Amazon in previous reports. In this report, we take a look at Facebook’s approach to video content, how it has evolved over the years, key components of its video strategy and the potential challenges that it faces.

Contents

Key takeaways

Introduction

Facebook and Video – a little bit of everything

• Facebook Watch – “Facebook what?”
• News
• Sports
• IGTV
• Live

Challenges

• Monetisation
• Lack of accurate metrics
• Misuse of the platform

Regulatory oversight – Fallout from the ACCC Digital Platforms Enquiry

Facebook and Video – loads of content but nothing to Watch

List of charts/tables

Figure 1. Facebook and Video – a little bit of everything

Figure 2. Global smartphone video consumption by form of content (% of total viewing time)

Figure 3. Facebook Live Statistics (as of April 2018)

Figure 4. Most popular app for mobile video streaming in Australia