Have you recently seen more and more videos in your Facebook News Feed? If so, you aren’t alone.

Whenever Facebook launches a new product or feature, it typically elevates relevant content in the News Feed. This gives the content that extra bit of “Facebook Juice” to get it seen by a larger audience.

Because of this, it becomes very important for social media marketers to track new Facebook changes and modify strategies to take advantage of these opportunities.

Most of Facebook’s newest features have come through the medium of video, and according to the social network, “Video viewing on Facebook grew over 50% from May through July of this year. This is particularly true on mobile, where people check Facebook over fourteen times per day.”

We’ve been counseling our clients on the value of video on Facebook for many months now, and yesterday’s little-noticed announcement about new video features makes that opportunity even more valuable.

Facebook to Publicly Display Video Views

Starting this week, Facebook will begin to publicly display the number of views a video receives, which it says will “help people discover popular videos and act as the quickest way for you to see how many views your video received.”

While there are plenty of available metrics to evaluate the effectiveness of your own Facebook strategy, there haven’t been many publicly available features to help compare your success to the success of your competitors. Up to now, you’ve basically had Page Likes, People Talking About This, Post Likes, Comments and Shares. The addition of the publicly viewable Video Views metric will be widely embraced by businesses and agencies alike as a means of measuring campaign success.

We caution though that too much emphasis on a single metric can skew a campaign and its reporting. Video Views will not directly move an audience to action or increase your business’s bottom line. It is a single means of measuring a much larger effort — one that needs a variety of metrics including ones connected directly to the overarching organizational objectives.

New Facebook Video Ad Features

Facebook is also debuting the following video ad features this week, many of which we look forward to integrating immediately into our client campaigns.

• Optimize your ad campaigns by paying on a “Video Views oCPM” basis, which will ensure that your videos reach the highest number of views.
• Re-market to people who have viewed a video, helping you move people from awareness to consideration and affinity over time.
• Add a call-to-action to a video, inviting people to further engage with your content on Facebook or offsite.

Facebook will also offer video metrics at the post, page and video ad levels, including video views, views at different points within a video, and completed views. This will help marketers to track success and ensure that there are no shortcomings within a user’s video experience.

If you have any questions about these new Facebook changes, please leave a note in the Comments section or shoot us an email.