Digital News South Africa

Visual language comes to life on Facebook

Facebook has noted a shift to a visual language coming to life across the globe. This shift involves a new universal language - one that is visual (photos, emojis, stickers and videos) and increasingly mobile. In just two years, video consumption on mobile has grown by 532% cross-platform (source: eMarketer) and mobile video overall is estimated to increase 14-fold between 2013 and 2018 (source: Cisco Systems).

On Facebook specifically:

    • Over the past year, the number of video posts per person has increased 75% globally and 94% in the US
    • Globally, the amount of video from people and brands in News Feed has increased 3.6x year-over-year.
    • On average, more than 50% of people who come back to Facebook every day in the US watch at least one video every day.

    • A significant proportion of these video views on Facebook are happening on mobile: 65% globally.

With people creating, posting and interacting with more video, the composition of News Feed is reflecting this evolution of behaviour; 76% of people in the US who use Facebook say they tend to discover the videos they watch on Facebook.

Visual language comes to life on Facebook

More brand opportunities

"Expressing ideas through film is a core aspect of how creative people love to bring ideas to life. With the explosive growth of video on Facebook, it is exciting to see News Feed become the centre of discovery for this work. We are only just starting to unlock the potential of sight, sound and motion in a feed-driven world," says Mark D'Arcy, Chief Creative Officer of Facebook's Creative Shop

For marketers, mobility gives brands more opportunities to reach people in a visually vibrant way that transcends language barriers via the screen that is with people everywhere, all the time. For instance, kate spade new york recently launched "the waiting game" video, featuring Anna Kendrick on various platforms for the holiday including Facebook. In just under a month, the video had reached over 9.9 million people, over 1.8 million views and received over 49,000 likes, comments and shares (from 13/11/14 - 11/12/14).

For more information, go to insights.fb.

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