What matters the most when it comes to your explainer video metrics and which should you use — YouTube or Facebook — to measure your explainer video’s performance? Here’s a quick breakdown that explains a few of the major differences between YouTube’s and Facebook’s analytics tools.
A few years back, YouTube views were the most important metric, but this is not the case anymore. Nowadays many marketers are taking advantage of Premium Video Ads on Facebook; these ads are measured like TV ads were measured 10 years ago.
Marketers can buy Facebook ads on the basis of Targeted Gross Rating Points in order to reach a certain audience over a certain period of time.The measurement of the delivery is done by a third-party called Nielsen Digital Ad Ratings. The company provides information about how many times an ad was viewed the next day. It works like the rating system of Nielsen TV ratings.
Facebook introduced Video Metrics in 2014. While they are not necessarily better than YouTube Analytics or AdWords for video, they are different. Facebook video metrics are called “video views” and “clicks to play video.” Facebook metrics differentiate between the view count after the video was clicked for playback and the view count of a 15-second video ad that gets played with sound off when it shows up on the screen when users scroll past. In a way, the “clicks to play video” of Facebook is much like “Views” on YouTube.
In the Page Insights of Facebook, the audience retention graph is just like the audience retention report on the video sharing site YouTube’s Analytics.
With Facebook’s metrics, you can check the view count that reached a certain point in a explainer video, which can be 25%, 50% or 100% for instance. On the other hand, YouTube Analytics allows you to check “Average View Duration and Average Percent Viewed for certain videos in order to check which type of content renders more views.
With the feature “data breakdowns” in the Ads Reporting of Facebook, it is possible to see how certain users responded to a video. For instance, the feature will show you how many views your video got from women between the ages of 18 and 30. On the other hand, YouTube Analytics gives directional insights into the age and gender of the audience. It will show you:
- Where your viewers found your video
- How many videos were watched by each viewer
- How many viewers shared your video
- Why they are subscribing to your channel
- The effectiveness of your cards and annotation to increase conversions
