Facebook wants you to know it’s rocking video, adds view counts

Facebook is killing when it comes to video and it wants you to know it too. The social media giant announced that it now delivers more than a billion video views a day.

It’s accelerated its efforts in getting to that point too. The company says that it saw more than 50% growth in video views from May through July of this year. Given the consensus until relatively recently was that Facebook was battling with mobile, it should also be pleased that more than 65% of video views are now on mobile.

If it can’t get advertisers to hop on board its video options though, those metrics mean little. As TechCrunch’s Josh Constine notes it went a long way to bringing those advertisers on board with the purchase of video adtech company LiveRail in July.

It’s also just rolled out view counts on its videos, which will help both advertisers and the general public get a better gauge on what videos are performing especially well.

Interestingly, the one feature that people thought would kill video on Facebook, auto-play, seems to have had little, if any, negative effect.

The company highlights several other tweaks it’s made to its video offering in the past year or so, including improvements to video ranking within News Feed and the fact that it’s testing out related video on mobile.

It’s also keen to point out that “publishers and public figures are also creating and sharing more great video content on Facebook, from on-the-ground reporting from media organizations to exclusive releases and behind-the-scenes videos from public figures”.

Interestingly, the tweaks it’s provided for publishers — including more detailed metrics such as Call to Action, which allows content creators to invite people to visit a destination, such as a website, after the video ends to learn more, watch more or make a purchase.

“The goal of News Feed is to deliver the right stories to the right people at the right time, from the people and things you care about,” says Facebook Project Management Director for Video Fidji Simo,