In the third quarter of 2010, BrightCove and Tube Mogul’s Online Video & The Media Industry report showed that Facebook passed Yahoo to become the No. 2 source of traffic to online videos at media sites. (The study measures videos across the Brightcove network, with a focus on newspaper, magazine, broadcaster, brand, and online media sites). Facebook has continued its reign as the second largest referrer of traffic, behind Google, in the fourth quarter of 2010 according to a new report from the video platform companies.
Facebook exhibited the healthiest growth rates in terms of referral traffic, now accounting for 11.8% of all referred video traffic to media companies. The report says that the social network’s growth is mainly attributed to Facebook’s increasing support for white-listed embedded video that plays in-stream, allowing for contextual viewing without requiring any redirect of traffic. Google accounts for 60% of traffic whereas Twitter only accounts for around 2% of traffic. Clearly, search drives views.
In terms of growth rate, Yahoo and Twitter both showed dwindling growth rates. Facebook is growing the fastest in terms of referral traffic followed by Bing and Google.
However, Facebook and Twitter elicited higher engagement rates than Google measured by minutes viewed. The report showed that brands (as opposed to magazines, newspapers, broadcasters, and online media) have higher engagement rates across all referring sources, including Google and Facebook, than other content, which could suggest both video discovered with SEO and through social sharing are resulting in increased engagement for brand viewers. Brands saw highest video engagement when referred by Yahoo, reaching 2:30 minutes viewed on average, which may point to the success of syndication efforts of such content.
