YouTube beware: Facebook is now a video creation hub

The number of video posts went up 75% globally in the last year, and 94% in the United States

When Facebook first said it was going to be introducing video onto the News Feed, my reaction was likely the same as so many of you did: please, don't! For the love of all that is holy, don't clog up our feeds with terrible videos!

I now freely admit that I was completely wrong. Facebook did everything right: they have used videos sparingly, and not over done it like they easily could have, and while the videos auto-play, they start out muted so we can ignore them. They have been so successful, in fact, that some think  that Facebook could actually challenge YouTube as the go-to source for Internet video. 

On Wednesday, Facebook released some new stats to help back up this assertion.

In just the last year, the number of video posts per person has increased 75% globally. That number is even higher, 94%, in the United States. That has amounted to the number of videos, from both users and from advertisers, increased 3.6 times in that span.

Facebook has over 1.2 billion users, and now more than half of them watch at least one video day. Even more impressive is that 76% of Facebook users in the U.S. say they tend to discover the videos they watch on Facebook.

Since July of last year, Facebook has been seeing over one billion views every single day, with 65% of those views occurring on a mobile device. 

This is all big news for Facebook, because video is where the money's at. Stats like these are more likely to draw even more advertisers to the site and, according to a report out from Business Insider in July of last year, video ad revenue is set to grow faster than any other medium, save for mobile. They will reach nearly $5 billion in 2016, nearly doubling from $2.8 billion in 2013.

After much delay, Facebook finally launched its video ads in March of last year. Each ad is 15 seconds long, and will begin playing without sound, as to not become intrusive. They will stop if the user scrolls past, but if they click on the video it will expand into full screen and play with sound.

The company gave a boost to its video ad unit in July, with the purchase of online video distribution and ad-platform LiveRail.

LiveRail helps companies, including Major League Baseball, ABC Family, A&E Networks, Gannett, and Dailymotion, to serve better ads in the videos that appear on their websites and apps. It also provides increased targeting capabilities. The company delivers over 7 billion video ads each month.

(Image source: eprofits.com)