Facebook has updated its News Feed algorithm change to show more relevant videos to users, and increase the value of its content to advertisers as a result.
Alongside the standard likes, comments and shares to rank a video’s popularity, Facebook will also take into account whether and how long a video is viewed.
“People who tend to watch more video in News Feed should expect to see more videos near the top of their Feed,” Facebook wrote in a blog post. “Conversely, people who tend to skip over videos without watching them should expect to see fewer videos.”
The change applies to videos uploaded directly to the Facebook platform. Videos linked from other sites, such as YouTube and Vimeo, already were ranked using similar metrics.
In testing, Facebook said, the change resulted in users watching more video, which coincides with an overall increase of video viewing on the network with twice as many people watching video on Facebook than did six months ago.
Facebook recommends that Page owners post stories and videos that will resonate with their audience on Facebook and use the new video metrics section in Page Insights to help understand which videos their audience is watching.
Read the blog announcement here