Which video platform gives you the best views for your art?

More and more artists are using videos to generate traffic for their website, blog, Facebook Page and their ART! 2017 is very much the year of the video...

Some of you may even have noticed I've been posting a few videos recently - with some significant impact on my Insight metrics on Facebook!

But which platform gives you the best video views?

I've been thinking maybe Facebook is the best medium - but I learned something today that's worth sharing.

Did you know that YouTube and Facebook count views differently? No? Nor did I!

Apparently their video metrics are VERY DIFFERENT:

• YouTube counts views after 30 seconds of viewings (ie it eliminates all the flybys)
• Facebook counts all the views after just 3 seconds.
• That's a difference of 27 seconds or a factor of 10!!!

Bottom line Facebook might look like it gives you the best views. However since it's counting views in a very way and views which are wholly discounted by YouTube you cannot easily draw a conclusion as to which is the best platform for video views.

I'm guessing the reason why the views are so short in Facebook is that Facebook encourages people to video live - and given most people are going to be out and about with (maybe) an uncertain connection such live videos are more likely to be short.

Me - I video while out and about, download when I get home, edit the clips together and top and tail them in iVideo, then upload to YouTube.

Then a few days later I upload the same video to Facebook - which is how I got comparative data on videos.

So there I was, looking at the numbers and being very impressed with my Facebook views - and thinking the place to put videos in future is Facebook - when actually if we were talking apples and apples (as opposed to pears) the figures might be very different.

Viewing videos on Facebook | Photo by William Iven on Unsplash

I found a very useful article about how videos views are counted on What Counts As a Video View on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Snapchat? The Buffer Guide to Video Metrics (dated March 29, 2017)

This provides

• an analysis of different kinds of videos
  Facebook video
  Facebook Live
  Instagram video
  Instagram Stories
  Instagram live video
  Snapchat Stories
  Twitter video
  Periscope
  YouTube
• an infographic which lines up the various metrics and compares
• what counts as a view
• when counting starts
• whether auto-play is involved
• whether there is an auto-loop (that thing which keeps playing videos even when you don't want it to!)

Bottom line it all boils down to money and metrics for advertising and metrics are the basis on which people get paid.

I RECOMMEND that you take a look. 

YouTube in contrast offers a TrueView advertising format whereby consumers have to watch at least five seconds of an ad and advertisers don’t pay a penny until they’ve watched at least 30 seconds. 
The Guardian | Facebook’s inflated video metrics signals a need to define what a 'view' is by Jerry Daykin

In terms of artists going forward there's another quote from the Guardian article which is worth taking to heart

The right approach to video measurement will always depend on specific business objectives – for instance do you need lots of people to hear a little from your brand, or would you rather fewer people really engage and understand a message?

So the question you need to ask yourself is WHY are you using videos - and are you using the best platform for your end objective?