• by Gavin O'Malley , Staff Writer @mp_gavin, January 31, 2018

Among other anxiety-inducing questions, publishers and brands are asking how Facebook’s recent rash of algorithm changes will affect their video strategies.

Of course, it didn’t help that Adam Mosseri, Facebook’s News Feed head, said the shift toward content from friends and family would slow the spread of video from other sources.

Yet, at least through 2022, video adverting opportunities will abound on Facebook, Instagram and other social networks, new research suggests.

YouTube -- which boasts more than 1 billion hours of video viewed per day -- is facing increasing competition from Facebook and other platforms, according to a new report from Juniper Research. In particular, the delivery of live video content via social media channels will be a key growth area in 2018, Juniper suggests.

Plus, advertisers are increasingly warming to live video, says Lauren Foye, a senior research analyst at Juniper. “This content will increasingly be of interest to advertisers, especially in view of Facebook’s monthly active user base of over 2 billion people,” she notes in the report.

Accelerating this trend, “the company has launched an app and website ‘Facebook for Creators’ to help users refine video content and generate viewership,” Foye notes.

More broadly, advertising on what Juniper calls “free video on demand” will surge over the next five years from an estimated $16 billion in 2017 to $37 billion by 2022. Worldwide, unique users of such content will approach 4.5 billion by 2022.

By 2022, Juniper still expects YouTube to account for nearly a quarter of all free video on demand ad spend.

That’s despite the fact the video giant recently tweaked its Partner Program. Now, only channels with more than 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 viewing hours per year are eligible to accept advertising.