30 Nov Video will take over Facebook in the next 5 years

Have you been noticing more videos popping up on your Facebook news feed than ever before? Well, it’s not just you. In fact, Facebook is making a conscious effort to include more rich media, such as videos, into news feeds, a trend that will certainly continue.

“In five years, most of [Facebook] will be video,” stated Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg during the company’s first ever community town hall meeting on November 6.

The push for video is yet another aspect of Facebook’s growth, as it consistently tries to distinguish itself from other social media platforms.

In addition to promoting videos created, curated, and shared by users, also comes with the opportunity for advertising revenue from videos. A study done by Forester Research projects that online display ad spending will rise 90% by 2019, with most of that being propelled by video.

Of course, Mark Zuckerberg and Co. want a piece of that pie.

Facebook is steadily preparing its infrastructure to allow the magnitude of rich media it hopes to accommodate, and has already put pieces in place.

In May, Facebook introduced an autoplay feature on their videos, which begins playing video as soon as users scroll past them in their feeds; after months of testing, Facebook-owned Instagram implemented 15-second autoplay ads in November.

With this move, higher rates of people are posting Facebook-native videos than YouTube videos (which do not autoplay), which translate to a digital power shift in terms of views, and in turn advertising revenue.

Another interesting thing to note: Facebook is scheduled to present at the 2015 NewFronts next May, a marketing conference that focuses on digital content creation, where the content is usually designed to “wow” advertisers.

Most Newfronts presentations have a focus on premium video, with all of last year’s presenting companies introducing new web content. This development has led to speculation that Facebook will be introducing plans to create original programming.

With all of these moves, Facebook seems poised to be a big player in the upcoming video movement.

It’ll be interesting to see how Zuckerberg implements the company’s strategy, and just as interesting to see how it’s competitors react.