Facebook is changing its video algorithm to incentivize publishers to create more long-form video. They'll be looking at the percent completion rates to determine video interest and they'll be weighing the percent completion higher for longer videos.
Why it matters: It's another step to compete with TV networks for ad dollars on long-form content.
Facebook's step-by-step :
1) introduced a live platform and paid publishers $50 million collectively to produce content for it as an incentive. They incentivized those partners to make live videos longer by algorithmically favoring videos at least 10-minutes long.
2) Rolled out a video tab to test housing an in-platform destination for long-form video.
3) Announced they were testing mid-roll ads that can be monetized for publishers but are only available for videos longer than 90-seconds.
What to expect: Facebook will still count a video view at any length as three seconds, but without the financial and algorithmic incentive to produce short video, you'll probably see less of that from publishers in your newsfeed.
