Facebook Redesigns Video Features

Positioning itself more as a video hub on par with YouTube, Facebook is rolling out a new design for the Video section of Facebook Pages.

Page owners — from brands to news outlets — will soon be invited to top off their pages with featured videos. The super-sized videos will be accompanied by a live comment feed, and a playlist of additional videos.

Facebook has every reason to be optimistic about its ongoing video investments. Growth in click-throughs for video ads has outpaced clicks for other types of page posts on the social giant, according to Kinetic Social.

Videos uploaded directly to Facebook now outnumber YouTube videos posted to the site, according to recent data from social analytics firm Socialbakers. Also, as of November, Facebook Pages posting Facebook videos now outnumber Facebook pages posting YouTube videos.

Across channels, video is booming. This 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.

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.

Facebook also just struck a video-distribution deal with the National Football League, which includes advertising by Verizon Wireless.

Eying 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.

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