For 60+ Second Facebook Vids, Users Watch <5% On AVG

Socialbakers most recent data makes grim reading for social media marketers.

Confirming suspicions that many in the industry have long harboured… Facebook video is not quite as good as it’s made out to be.

To put it mildly.

According to Socialbakers 2019 Q4 Trends Report, which analysed 19,622 Facebook brands Pages worldwide, the average Facebook video watch time is 4.57 Seconds.

Audiences made it through nearly 30% of videos that were less than 30 seconds long – 29.8% for vertical videos and 27% for horizontal videos.

On the other hand, videos lasting longer than one minute were too much for many people as viewers made it through less than 5% of the video – 4.8% for vertical and 4.7% for horizontal.

The report claims that viewers on Facebook brand pages were more likely to watch the first 30 seconds of a long video (> 60 seconds) than they were to watch the first 30 seconds of a medium-length one (30-60 seconds).

Vertical Versus Horizontal Video

The first 30s of long vertical videos were completed 16.4% of the time and horizontal ones 13.4%, compared to 14.9% and 12.5% for medium-length videos.

Videos shorter than 30 seconds were completed by far the most often (29.9% for vertical and 22.2% for horizontal).

Across the board, vertical videos performed better than horizontal videos.

However, the most common video orientation and length was a horizontal video lasting more than one minute.

Providing the worst of both worlds.

In Q4 2019, about 30% of video content on Facebook was vertical, but that was mostly limited to short videos.

In fact, vertical videos were more than twice as likely to be short (20.8%) than last any longer than 30 seconds (9.4%).

Instagram Topples Facebook For Reach & Engagement

Based on the top 50 brand profiles worldwide, there was a notable change in Q4 2019.

For the first time, the total audience on Instagram of those profiles surpassed the Facebook equivalent.

Additionally, the total interactions on Instagram were nearly 20 times greater than on Facebook.

Although the top 50 brands published more posts on Facebook, the combined engagement on those posts didn’t reach the numbers achieved on Instagram. With less posting.

Based on the Socialbakers data sample of profiles and pages with available insights, women made up the majority of fans and followers on both platforms in Q4 2019.

Good Luck Reaching Anyone Not Female 25 – 44

On Instagram, 58% of brand page followers were female, across almost every age demographic.

On Facebook, women made up 56.7% of the total audience of page fans, although there were slightly more men in the 18-24 age demographic.

Overall, the biggest audience by age on both platforms was 25-34, followed by 35-44. These two groups made up 63.9% of all followers on Instagram and 60.8% of Facebook page fans.

Suggesting that for a large percentage of organisations, social media success is in part determined by demographics, rather than a unique flair for social media marketing.

Some audience cohorts are simply more engaged and active than others on social channels.

Or, at a minimum, more open to interacting with brands and organisations.

Similar to the overall page fans figures, the largest group of people mentioning and interacting with brand pages in Q4 2019 was women in the prime marketing demographic of 25-34.

In Q4 2019, brands on Facebook had the most reach with people between the ages of 25-44, according to the Socialbakers data sample of pages with available insights.

58.1% of the audiences engaging with brands were between the ages of 25-44, with 35% of that occurring in the range of 25-34.

In all of the age groups, women made up the majority of the audience.

Photos Over Video Errr Day

On Facebook, images were the most common post type used by marketers, averaging 70.2% of all posts from brand pages throughout the year.

Video was the second-most common on the platform, averaging 16.8% of all posts in Q4 and 16.3% throughout 2019.

On Instagram, there was a small but noticeable trend of images going downward while video and carousel increased throughout the year.

Looking at 143,646 Facebook brand Pages worldwide, Facebook Live remains the star performer for engagement. Despite significant drops in performance through 2019.

Meanwhile, on Instagram, carousels continued to receive the most interactions, followed by images, with Instagram video languishing far back behind both.

While Instagram video posts struggle, they do appear to remain more effective on Stories, appearing 52% of the time, and driving fewer tap throughs.

In October 2018, Mark Zuckerberg remarked on a quarterly earnings call, when discussing Facebook’s video offerings:

“To be clear, these services are still well behind YouTube, which is our primary competitor in this space, but they’re growing very quickly.”

Based upon Socialbakers recent data, it appears that while Facebook video may be improving there remains a VERY long way to go before it gets even close to YouTube.

If ever.