What Facebook’s New “Secret Videos” Means For Brands

What Happened
Earlier today, Facebook unveiled a series of new video publisher tools as it gears up to compete with YouTube for brands’ attention and ad dollars. Besides some standard additions that focuses on video customizations and library management, Facebook also added an option for brands to upload “secret videos” to their pages, which are only viewable to people with the direct links to such videos. We expect the exclusivity of the content and its artificial scarcity to increase engagement amongst the target demographics.

What Brands Should Do
If your brand produces videos for content marketing purposes, It may be time to consider trying out Facebook as it continues to build out its video ad platform. “Secret videos,” for example, give brands a way to share branded content privately with a selective audience, or simply embed it somewhere else without having it show up on the brand pages. Coupled with the vast demographic and behavioral data that Facebook processes on its users, these new video publisher tools could make it as a more targeted and effective alternative to YouTube for brands and marketers alike.

 

Source: The Next Web

Videos And Articles, Facebook Want Them All

Read original story on: The Verge & WSJ

In a continuous effort to expand its platform and build its own version of the Internet, Facebook has been actively pursuing media owners to host content directly on its network. Earlier this week, HBO becomes the latest content provider that opts to put their videos on the social network, as the premium cable channel announces two of their newest comedy series Baller and The Brink will be streaming their pilot episodes exclusively on Facebook for a limited time.

After a few weeks of dormant inactivity, publishers that signed on for the Instant Articles initiative are now gearing up to start scaling up content distribution on Facebook. The New York Times is reportedly preparing to publish about 30 articles per day and NBC News plans to post between 30 and 40 articles daily in the coming days.