Catching Up With Facebook Watch

By Paresh Rajwat, Director, Product Management, and Matthew Henick, Head of Content Planning and Strategy

Facebook Watch is built on the notion that watching videos can help you connect more deeply with people, instead of being a passive or solitary experience. You have virtually unlimited ways — comments, shares, reactions, polls, Groups, messages, Watch Parties, and more — to connect with people around the videos you love.

We launched Watch globally less than a year ago, and there are now more than 720 million people monthly and 140 million people daily who spend at least one minute in Watch. On average, daily visitors spend more than 26 minutes in Watch every day.

Building Watch for Social Video

Watch isn’t just a place to find videos and shows you love — it’s a place where you can explore and engage with other people who love them, too. These connections let people experience content in a whole new way, and we are focused on making Watch even more social.

We recently launched an easy way to find groups based on the videos you’re watching, right from Watch. For example, if you’re watching an episode of Red Table Talk in Watch, you’ll see the official group alongside the video, so you can join if you’d like to talk with other fans — or even the hosts themselves. We’re also testing new sections in Watch — like a way to find videos that are popular with friends, and a section dedicated to co-watching experiences like Watch Party, Premieres, and Live videos — to make it easier to connect with others around videos. We know that people like watching videos together with friends: we’ve found that people are 8X more likely to comment on videos in Watch Party than when watching on their own.

Something For Everyone In Watch

In order to make Watch the best place for people to enjoy videos together, we need to combine our range of social features with content that sparks people’s interests. Our goal with Watch is to offer a completely personalized experience for everyone, supported by a deep library of videos from a wide array of video creators and publishers.

An Ad-Supported Ecosystem

The best way to bring great content to Watch is to create a sustainable, ad-supported ecosystem where every publisher and creator can reach their audience, make money from their videos, and thrive on the platform. Ad breaks are available in more than 40 countries, and we continue to expand to more countries and languages around the world. Today we’re launching ad breaks in Canada, and over the coming weeks we will be adding support for five more languages: Kannada, Marathi, Punjabi, Swedish and Telugu.

Along with global expansion, the number of Pages actively using ad breaks has more than tripled over the past year — and the number of Pages earning over $1,000 in payouts per month has increased by more than 8X, while the number of Pages earning over $10,000 in payouts per month has increased by more than 3X.

Jay Shetty, a creator who makes inspirational videos on topics like relationships, self-love and purpose, and Mexican Survival Guide, creators of the popular and fun series about Mexican culture, found that creating longer videos that meet the three-minute ad break guidelines helped them earn more revenue to support their passions and expand their storytelling. And BuzzFeed and Group Nine Media are some of the publishers finding success with ad breaks, increasing their use across their Pages and leveraging tools like automatic ad placement to earn money for their engaging and creative videos.

Content Investments

We are also continuing our strategy of investing in a range of content that encourages conversations and connections. In addition to our Facebook Watch Originals, we are partnering with publishers and creators around the world so that they can bring timely, relevant and entertaining videos to Facebook Watch. Here’s a snapshot of what’s coming:

Looking Forward To The Future

There’s always a lot happening with Watch, from amazing new videos that spark conversations, to creators and publishers that inspire fans. We’re committed to making Watch the best place for everyone around the world to discover and watch videos together.