Many clients face confusion over the differences in Facebook and YouTube video advertising benefits. Where is there more ad value? On which platform do you get more bang for your buck? Generally, advertisers want their videos to get as many plays (actual plays that garner understanding) as possible, so which site do you choose?
Audience
YouTube’s entire purpose is to provide a destination site for watching videos; consumers are on the site for that purpose. Because of this, visitors may be more open to watch an ad and actually listen to it, assuming they aren’t playing another source of sound, which seems unlikely as they presumably are there to hear their selected YouTube video.
Facebook, on the other hand, although averaging 3 billion video views per day, serves it’s primary purpose as a social media platform. While inclined to click on awesome offers or read articles pertaining to their interests, users may be more inclined to ignore the video playing, perhaps even muting it out with something they’d rather be watching or listening to.
Targeting
Unlike on YouTube, a person MUST be logged into the Facebook site in order to view the video, thus, Facebook has the greatest ability to target the exact audience an advertiser wants. YouTube does offer some specificity in their targeting (i.e. video subjects such as sports or beauty), however, they can’t compare with the information given out by Facebook user profiles.
Price
YouTube offers skip-able “True-view” ads where advertisers are only charged when the video is played in its entirety. This, obviously, gives YouTube a more accurate CPV. Facebook, on the other hand, auto-plays it’s ads and begins and counts any play for longer than three seconds as a view. Facebook is kind enough to give the advertiser details of how many people did watch half of the video, or the whole thing, however, even four seconds of viewership costs.
Overall, Facebook is an awesome source to place graphic or text ads, gain business viewership/increase branding, offer deals, and respond to customer concerns, however, YouTube offers a much more effective method of tracking cost efficiency when it comes to video ads specifically.
