The social networking giant Facebook has released new figures that show the popularity of audiovisual content on its platform.
In a move that looks set to fire up its rivalry with Google-owned YouTube, it was revealed that the number of videos being posted to news feeds per user had increased by 75% in just one year.
Furthermore, it was claimed by Facebook in a statement that the amount of audiovisual media being uploaded to the social platform, from both general users and brands, had increased by 3.6 times year on year.
While the firm does have some way to go to take YouTube’s position as the go-to site for video content, with the Google subsidiary having around one billion users each month, it has been making headway.
According to Facebook, since June of last year the social site has averaged more than one billion daily views of videos on its network. Also, around 50% of U.S. users who visit the social platform each day are watching at least one piece of audiovisual content.
In a big boost to the company, around 76% of American Facebookers polled reported that they discover the videos that they watch on the social platform.
While the figures will have been enhanced by the fact that videos now play automatically within news feeds, the data shows that a lot of the content is being watched by a large number of people.
An example of Facebook’s wider video reach occurred in late December, when a new advert for Apple was launched. While it was watched 3.2 million times on YouTube, it was viewed 20.9 million times on Facebook.
- Instagram to expand advertising options - June 8, 2015
- A week of Twitter mishaps - June 5, 2015
- Twitter unleashes new analytics tool - June 4, 2015