How does facebook work video
Understanding Video Distribution on Facebook
We want Facebook to be the best place for people to find and enjoy videos online. Today on Facebook, people are discovering and watching videos in diverse formats, each offering distinct experiences:
- With Reels and Stories, people connect with others through engaging short bursts of entertainment.
- With Video on Demand and Live, people discover videos they care about and connect with their friends and fellow fans around that content.
Facebook’s video ecosystem values original content and encourages intentional and loyal consumption. We want videos on our platform to be authentic, enduring, and entertaining, which can turn casual viewers into passionate fans.
When you publish a video on Facebook, it reaches viewers via different video surfaces like Facebook Watch, Feed, In-Feed Recommendations, and the In-feed Reels player. Your Facebook audience can include: Followers, Recommendations, Shares, and Paid. As we learn more about what people want to watch, we update the factors that influence how, when, and where videos show up accordingly in those sources.
With that in mind, we wanted to explain the signals that have the greatest influence on distribution for videos right now. The first half of this post outlines best practices tied to the most important signals to focus on for videos that thrive on Facebook, while the second half of this post focuses on ways to increase the effectiveness of monetization for videos and how to use Creator Studio to measure your results.
Originality
Original videos reflect the unique voice and value of the content creator. They are distinctive and are produced in a manner that’s never been made before. Original content is a key factor that sets your account apart from others, and affects the kind of distribution and monetization that you might get as we prioritize original video to reward the hard work of crafting authentic content.
You can optimize for originality by:
- Publishing videos that you wrote, shot, and edited yourself or with the support of a production partner.
Make sure that you participate as much as possible in driving the creative direction and execution of the videos so it’s authentic to your page. - Meaningfully enhancing the content that you are sourcing or licensing from others. Adding new information, or humor to the content will add new value to the content.
- Avoiding duplicate content that you played no meaningful role in creating.
Your account should be your platform — a place to show the world who you are and how you think or create.
See Help Center for additional tips.
Capture and Retain Attention
Videos that capture the audience's attention and inspire people to watch to the end may earn more distribution on Facebook. Retention is one of the indicators of how well the content was received by the audience - a slow and gradual decline in the audience retention graph can show that the topic and structure of the video match well with what your audience wants to see, while an early drop off may mean that the content isn’t what the viewer expected.
You can optimize for retention in healthy, authentic ways by:
- Focusing on the video narrative structure. Research has shown that people on Facebook find value in videos that have a storyline. So be sure to capture your audience’s attention by planning the video’s opening, build-up, tension, pacing and payoff in ways that will entertain them. Content should only be as long as it needs to be so that it is relatable and engaging and keeps the audience interested for the entire duration.
- Building for on-the-go mobile viewing. Consider adding burned-in captions, or opt-in for the auto-generate option — many people watch videos with the sound turned off, and captions can grab their attention and make your content more accessible and inclusive.
- Improving production quality. Whether you use a camera phone or partner with a production team, clearly showcase your content by aiming for the best clarity. Poor lighting, bad audio or shaky video can make people move on.
Loyalty and Intent
When people regularly come back to view an account’s videos, we take it as a strong, positive signal for distribution. This is especially true when we see that people actively search for your content or seek it out on video-first destinations like Facebook Watch or directly on your account.
You can encourage these behaviors for your videos by:
- Publishing bonus content in between your regular posting cadences to stay connected with your audience and keep them excited. You can use different formats like videos, reels, stories, live videos and even photos or links.
- Longer-form storytelling is a powerful tool for conveying brand messaging, driving consideration, and telling nuanced stories
- Reels and shorter videos are great for sharing and discovering content in fast, immersive, and fun ways
- Optimizing your content for Facebook search. This includes writing clear titles, descriptions for your posts, and adding a few relevant tags.
This can help more people see your content, both via Search results and via the recommended videos that we show to people in Feed and in Facebook Watch.
Engagement
We prioritize content that sparks conversations and meaningful interactions between real people. To do this, we increase distribution for videos that inspire friend-to-friend or person-to-person interactions. In addition, we value content that inspires the audiences to create a version of their own, as our research has shown that participation leads to deeper connections.
Videos that do this well will:
- Inspire people to have meaningful, back and forth, respectful discussion in the comments. This must happen in a way that is not spammy or gratuitous.
- Be authentically shared. Organic sharing of content helps with additional distribution and reaching new audiences.
- Generate interactions. We also look at likes, comments and reactions to help us determine which content should get distribution priority.
These interactions should happen organically.
Videos may face reduced distribution if they:
- Feel more like slideshows. Videos that succeed on Facebook are dynamic and take full advantage of the format’s capabilities. Videos that rely too heavily on static images can have their distribution reduced.
- Employ manufactured sharing behaviors. This is when an account's content is artificially distributed through re-shares or sharing within a group, usually in exchange for compensation. Examples of this are when an account repeatedly shares content from another Page with which they have no direct connection, and the content is not related to any theme of their Page.
- Resort to baiting tactics:
- Engagement bait is a tactic that urges people to interact with content through likes, shares, comments, and other actions in order to artificially boost engagement and get greater reach. You can learn more about our Engagement Bait Guidelines to avoid getting reduced distribution.
- Watchbait is when a video intentionally withholds information, sensationalizes content, or misleads viewers into watching or engaging. Please see our Watchbait Best Practices article to avoid your account being flagged for Watchbait.
- Clickbait is when an account gets attention and lures visitors into clicking on a link by intentionally omitting crucial information from a headline or exaggerating the details of a story to make it seem like a bigger deal than it really is.
- Engagement bait is a tactic that urges people to interact with content through likes, shares, comments, and other actions in order to artificially boost engagement and get greater reach. You can learn more about our Engagement Bait Guidelines to avoid getting reduced distribution.
Pages that repeatedly exhibit these behaviors may ultimately lose the ability to generate revenue via in-stream ads or other monetization tools. To check whether your Page is (still) eligible for in-stream ads, use the Monetization tab in Creator Studio.
Monetization
Monetize your on-demand and live videos
Monetize your Reels
- Reels Play bonus program: Reels Play provides opportunities for creators to earn money for creating content directly from Facebook.
The Reels Play bonus pays creators for their original videos’ views on Reels during a given period. Learn more about it here. - Reels overlay ads: We’re expanding tests of Facebook Reels Overlay Ads to all in-stream creators in the US, Canada, Mexico, and more countries in the coming months. We’re starting with two formats: banner ads that appear as a semi-transparent overlay at the bottom of a Facebook Reel and sticker ads: a static image ad that can be placed by a creator anywhere within their reel. These non-interruptive ads enable creators to earn a portion of the ad revenue. Learn more about new ways to make money here.
Measuring Your Results
Now that we’ve shared the most important signals to focus on, read on to learn how you can track your performance on many of them with Creator Studio. Creator Studio is the one stop shop to post, manage, monetize, and track performance of your content across all your accounts.
Track how well you are able to capture and retain attention using creator studio:
- Track viewing behaviors at the account level via Insights > Retention > How Long People Are Watching.
- Track viewing behaviors at the video level via Performance Insights > [Select a video] > Post Performance > Audience Retention.
Track whether your videos are inspiring loyalty and intent
- Use Creator Studio’s Loyalty Insights tab to track your Returning Viewers against the content you produce each week. If you notice a sudden spike or dive in Returning Viewers, learn what type of content drives this behavior.
- You can also track whether your content is helping to grow your fanbase by using the Net Follower Growth chart in Performance Insights.
Track your videos’ ability to inspire authentic engagement
Use Creator Studio to track your videos’ engagement. The Engagement graph within Performance Insights can help you spot spikes or dips that happened on a particular day. To find the videos behind the changes, you can sort your Top Videos by Date Created or by Engagement, and then drill down further to find the videos that drove the most reactions, comments, and shares.
New tools to explore in Creator Studio:
Use post testing in the creator studio to optimize your post’s performance, understand what kinds of creative content your audience responds to the best, and discover trends to make informed decisions about future posts.
Facebook benchmarking insights allow you to compare your Page’s video performance to other Pages on Facebook. It provides you with key metrics to gauge how well your videos perform in comparison to the videos of your top competitors.
Understanding How Your Videos Perform on Facebook
Your Video's Performance
In order to understand how videos contribute to your overall reach and engagement, visit the Posts tab of Page Insights and click on Post Types. This will bring up a list of your posts and their average engagement.
Understanding what types of posts drive the most reach engagement can tell you what to include regularly in your content calendar.
Individual Video Metrics
Metrics are available at the video level from within Page Insights.
To see metrics for your video, go to the Posts tab within your Page Insights. From there, scroll down to the 'All Posts Published' to see all the posts you have published on your Page. Clicking on the post title for your video (marked with a video camera icon) will take you to your video metrics for each post.
The All Posts Published list will give you a quick snapshot of the individual reach and engagement of your posts. Here you can choose to boost posts if a particular post has performed well and you want to expose additional people to your content, or an important post has not received the reach you would have liked. You can also filter by Fans/Non-Fans to understand the audience you reached a bit clearer.
Video Retention
The audience retention graph shows your video's retention over time. Hovering over the graph captures what frame in your video corresponds to a specific time and retention percentage.
To the right of your video, you'll also see the average view duration, the total video views for the first 28 days of your video's life and the number of people that watched your video for 30 seconds (or to completion if you video is less than 30 seconds).
The metrics will be broken down by unique vs. repeat views, but you can change this to filter for auto-played vs. clicked-to-play or paid vs. organic.
Use the retention curve to understand where in the video your audience drops off. Expect to see some of your audience drop off at the beginning as people scroll through their News Feed.
Filtering by auto-play vs. click-to-play offers a better sense of the people that clicked your video to watch and whether the two groups behaved differently while watching your video.
If you see a point in your video with a large drop off, take a look at your content to understand which parts of your video might not have been as engaging to people. In addition, looking at your average view duration and comparing that to videos of other lengths will give you a sense of your audience's appetite for video length.
Video Engagement
Clicking on 'Post' will show you metrics about your video. Here you'll find your video's total 28-day engagement, a breakdown of the likes, comments, and shares on both your original post, and re-shares as well as any negative feedback on your video - when people decide to hide your video from their News Feed or report it as inappropriate.
Engagement is the best measure of how much you video resonated with your audience. If you can understand what types of videos cause viewers to take action, you can better match your content to your audience and reach new people.
If a video has a high negative feedback rate, figure out why and take action. You are likely to also see some negative feedback on any post with high reach numbers, but if you see a spike in negative feedback for a particular post you should work to understand the root cause.
Clicks on your Video
On the Post tab of your video metrics you will see a section that details clicks for your video post. The section is divided into three areas: Clicks to Play, Link Clicks, and Other Clicks.
Clicks to Play tell you how many times your video started playing after someone clicked it. If you included a link in your post, Link Clicks show how many times someone clicked a link in your post. Finally, Other Clicks offers information on how many times someone clicked other elements of your post, including your Page title, links to 'See More', or your Video's Call-to-action.
Depending on the goal of your post, these numbers may matter more or less to you. If your goal is to send people to your Facebook page or to your website (or another site) these could help you understand how much traffic you directed to those different sites. Testing and understanding what types of posts and links drive referral traffic can help you get the most out of each video.
About Reels Videos on Facebook
Help Center
Using Facebook
Reels Videos
Reels on Facebook are short videos. You can also see the Reels video from Instagram if the author chooses to post it on Facebook as well. Recommended Reels videos are based on your interests and may appear in your Feed and Facebook Watch.
Learn more about what Reels videos are and how to create them.
Difference between Reels videos created on Facebook and Instagram
Instagram usernames. Next to the Reels video from Instagram, you'll see the author's username from their Instagram account, not Facebook. You will also see next to the username.
Comments. Reels videos created on Facebook can be commented on while watching. To comment on a Reels video created on Instagram, you'll need to sign in to your Instagram app or instagram.com.
Likes. You can see how many people liked a Reels video, but you can only see who liked a video on the platform it was created on. nine0003
To see a list of people who have "Like" a video on Facebook, click on the number below the icon in the lower right corner of the screen.
Replays. For Reels videos created on Instagram, information about the number of plays is available. Playback is considered to be watching a video for at least 1 ms. Repeat views do not count. The number of plays on both Facebook and Instagram is taken into account. If you watch the Reels video on both platforms, two plays will be counted. Play count information is also available for most Reels videos created on Facebook. nine0003
To find out the number of plays, click on the number under the icon in the lower right corner of the screen.
Author's page. When you watch a Reels video created on Facebook, you can click on the author's name to see their other videos. If you are watching a Reels video created on Instagram on Facebook, clicking on the author's name will take you to their Instagram profile.
Notes
When you watch Reels videos on Facebook, you may see other short videos (less than 60 seconds long) created by the Pages. nine0003
Information about the number of views of such videos is not available.
Learn how to create a Reels video on Instagram and share it on Facebook.
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90,000 Facebook Watch: what is the service review of Fakebook Watch kind of social television. Content: It is available to all Facebook users. Anyone can go to Facebook Watch at any time, and only owners of business accounts can upload videos there. nine0003
What it is to the general public in August 2017. At first it worked in a test format, then it was finally integrated into the social network.
It is not a separate platform, it is only part of Facebook. To use the service, you do not need to re-register or install additional applications and software. To go to Facebook Watch, just click on the appropriate button. It is located on your page in the left column. nine0003
How does Facebook Watch work? Usually these are small videos, although some of them can be several hours long. They are created by users who have registered in the appropriate capacity;
Interface
All functions and features are pretty self-explanatory.
The entire panel is on the left side of the screen. It contains the following icons:
- search bar. Allows you to search for videos by title, subject and author;
- main. With its help, you can go to the general video feed;
- live. Needed to switch to online broadcasts;
- shows - special shows that go only within the social network;
- saved videos - a list of videos that the user has added to favorites. nine0078
How to watch videos
- Go to Facebook Watch.
- Find any video you like in the feed and click on play.
There are icons below each video:
- likes;
- share;
- comment.
The same line displays the total number of comments, likes and views.
Each clip can be rewound or rewound. By clicking on the gear, you can select the playback quality. Here you can adjust the volume and full screen mode. nine0003
Each video in the feed is a separate post. Above it is the name of the page from where it was published and there is a small description. In order not to miss new videos, you should click on the "Subscribe" button.
Clicking on the additional menu (three dots at the top right) will open this list.
How to post your videos to Facebook Watch
First, you'll need to tweak your business page settings a bit.
Procedure:
- Log in to Facebook with your credentials.
- Go to Settings.
- Select "Templates and tabs".
- Click on the "Video Page" item.
- Apply a template to your business page.
Only then will the user be able to post videos.
Adding video to Facebook Watch:
- In the Settings section, click Add Video.
