Is YouTube at Risk of Losing its Status as the King of Online Video?

With global ad spend tipped to reach $531 billion this year, new research from UK-based Ampere Analysis has found that Facebook now poses a major threat to YouTube's long-held dominance in online video advertising. From Ampere's report:

"Currently viewed as a platform for building awareness, Facebook hasn't yet been able to compete with YouTube's ability to deliver revenue returns to content creators through its huge engaged audiences across the globe. But now it appears that Facebook is making a serious play for content owners. The social network's video views are rocketing and recent trials with content owners suggest it's primed to become a plausible alternative to YouTube."

Source: Ampere Analysis

Ampere's data suggests that Facebook's threat to YouTube's market hold will have lasting impacts, with YouTube's longer term growth prospects being questioned. This isn't the first time YouTube's come under the spotlight, with competitors like Facebook, Vine and Snapchat rapidly increasing their video views and eating into YouTube's market share. Earlier this month, YouTube announced a new platform – YouTube Gaming – to hold onto the lucrative gamer market. But amidst all this disruption, will YouTube be able to maintain its position as king of online video content?

There's no doubt that the rise of video content on Facebook has YouTube spooked. Facebook's massive user base and the rapid adoption of video content, particularly since the introduction of autoplay in the News Feed, has ramped up the pressure on YouTube to adapt their process and do more to maintain audience attention. Such as been evident this year, with YouTube actively promoting its most popular personalities via magazine, broadcast and cable TV ads. YouTube's also introduced continuous autoplay – where a new video starts once the one you watched ends – and has been working with several major sporting codes to secure broadcast rights in a move to transition live sport coverage more exclusively online.

While currently YouTube remains in a strong position in terms of overall audience and visitors, moves by social networks, particularly Facebook, to favor natively posted video content and structure more lucrative video advertising partnerships have hurt, and have forced YouTube into a fighting stance for the first time in many years. Facebook, too, has looked to sport as a driver, making deals with Major League Baseball and Fox Sports to host video content directly published to the platform. And given the potential reach of Facebook content, YouTube has its work cut out for it in holding onto its revenue streams as Facebook flexes it's muscle.  

When you consider, too, that online video is now growing faster than any other digital category, and is forecast to grow 29% per year through to 2017, the stakes in this battle are increasingly high.

In a recent report from ZenithOptimedia, Zenith CEO Steve King made note of the massive rise of the internet in advertising circles:

"The internet is quickly establishing itself as the dominant advertising medium, and on current trends will overtake television by the end of the decade."

King also mentioned the role that mobile technology has played, with the report highlighting that mobile advertising is the key driver of internet growth.

"Between 2014 and 2017 we forecast that mobile will more than double its share of global adspend, from 5.1% to 12.9%. Desktop internet's share will remain stable, changing from 19.3% in 2014 to 19.4% in 2017, while every other medium will lose share to mobile. Mobile is also the driving force behind the growth of the whole market, and will contribute 70% of all global adspend growth between 2014 and 2017."

For Facebook, this is great news – at their most recent earnings call, Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg noted that 75% of their video views happen on mobile devices, giving it a lead over YouTube, which reports that half of their views are conducted via mobile. Whether those figures are totally indicative is another question, but definitely, the rise of mobile seems to play more towards the favor of social networks, like Facebook, Vine and Snapchat, than it does for YouTube. When you add to this the attention that social networks are getting via mobile, and the fact that they give preferential treatment to native video over YouTube content, and the signs suggest that YouTube is set for a decline, at least in some respects. In line with that, a recent survey by Mixpo found that an increasing number of advertisers are looking to utilize Facebook, Twitter and Instagram to facilitate their video campaigns in the next year, in favor of YouTube.    

So what does this mean for the future of video advertising? In many respects, the data suggests that YouTube is no longer the king it once was, that it's now vulnerable to challengers who are coming on thick and fast. While YouTube is still a viable option, and is still in a strong position overall, the threat of social-originated video content definitely has YouTube on the back foot and looking for answers, a position somewhat unfamiliar for them. But YouTube is still ubiquitous, it's still the second largest search engine, to dismiss Google's video behemoth would be a mistake. But the challengers are mounting up. Advertising options are increasing. Dependent on your business, it just may be that a younger, more creative network might provide the best opportunities for your video outreach efforts.

While you shouldn't dismiss it, you also shouldn't hesitate in experimenting with new video options outside of YouTube alone.

var _comscore = _comscore || []; _comscore.push({ c1: "2″, c2: "19915597″ }); (function() { var s = document.createElement("script"), el = document.getElementsByTagName("script")[0]; s.async = true; s.src = (document.location.protocol == "https:" ? "https://sb" : "http://b") + ".scorecardresearch.com/beacon.js"; el.parentNode.insertBefore(s, el); })();

View the original article here

Original source: Is YouTube at Risk of Losing its Status as the King of Online Video?.
http://www.jretechnology.com