Dive Brief:
- Facebook has tweaked its news feed algorithm to give more weight to video views when determining which videos — ads and organic — appear in the stream.
- The idea is that users who watch more videos will begin to see more videos in their feed and users who don't will see less.
- Before, Facebook only took into account likes and shares for videos, but the algorithm now considers how often and for how long a user watches videos.
Dive Insight:
For marketers, the algorithm change is even more incentive to create the kind of video content Facebook users will actually watch. In many ways, including views in the algorithm will benefit marketers — it's easier to inspire a passive action like a video view than it is an active action like a "share" or "like." The ads in the news feed are auto-play, so that could account for the spike in video views — but eyes on content are still a good sign for social media marketers.