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How Facebook Just Improved Video Performance Tracking

As has been discussed a great deal over the past year or so, Facebook Video is bigger than ever, and the company continues to make improvements to related tools it offers businesses. Which tools have ...
How Facebook Just Improved Video Performance Tracking
Written by Chris Crum
  • As has been discussed a great deal over the past year or so, Facebook Video is bigger than ever, and the company continues to make improvements to related tools it offers businesses.

    Which tools have helped you with your video efforts? Let us know in the comments.

    Just last week, for example, the company announced new features for video ads to help advertisers better communicate their messages and capture viewers’ attention with automated captioning for sound-off videos, new metrics, and Moat integration/in-view buying.

    “The new tool generates captions for video ads and delivers them to the advertiser within the ad creation tool to review, edit and save to their video ad,” a Facebook spokesperson explained in an email. “Our research found that when feed-based mobile video ads play loudly when people aren’t expecting it, 80% react negatively, both toward the platform and the advertiser. By including captions, advertisers can increase video view time by an average of 12%.”

    In the new metrics department, the spokesperson explained, “Advertisers are now able to see the percentage of people who have viewed their videos with sound in Page Insights and will soon be able to see this metric in Ads Insights too.”

    Moat integration and in-view buying were announced last fall, but are now available globally. This means, according to Facebook, 100% in-view impression buying with verification from analytics provider Moat. You can read more about that here.

    Even since all of this, Facebook announced that it is rolling out a new, redesigned video metrics interface in Page Insights, which adds new Minutes Viewed and 10-Second Views metrics as well as a new Sound-on vs. Sound-off feature.

    The Minutes Viewed metric means the total minutes of watch time spent on the video. Facebook says this has been one of the most requested video metrics from publishers.

    The 10-Second Views metric is the number of times the video was viewed to 10 seconds. For videos shorter than 10 seconds, the metric refers to the number of times people viewed at least 97% of the video.

    Other available metrics include Unique Viewers, Views, and Average % Completion.

    “The updated interface also makes it easy for publishers to access more granular video performance data by clicking through individual metrics on the updated Insights view,” says product manager Anaid Gomez-Ortigoza.

    The breakdowns include the new Sound-on vs. Sound-off, which is available for both Views and 10-second Views, and Organic vs. Pai, which is available for Minutes Viewed, Views, 10-Second Views, and Unique Viewers.

    “Video publishers have told us that they rely on Page Insights to track the performance of their posts and optimize their video content and programming strategies,” says Gomez-Ortigoza. “Today’s updated interface allows for flexibility as we continue to learn more from publishers about the video performance insights that help them grow their businesses on Facebook.”

    The new interface is available in Page Insights, and will hit the Insights API in the near future.

    In other recent Facebook video news, they added live video to the Pages Manager app earlier this month.

    According to the company, 100 million hours of video are watched on Facebook on a daily basis, and they don’t even have their expected standalone video app out yet.

    What recent additions has Facebook made that have helped you get more out of your video efforts? Discuss in the comments.

    Image via Facebook

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