Facebook is one of the “most unique stories” as it has some “open-ended opportunities,” notes Piper Jaffray Internet analyst Gene Munster. On Monday, in an interview with CNBC’s “Squawk Alley,” Munster also pointed out that the social networker is grabbing attention away from Google.
Facebook grabbing marketers’ attention
Commenting on the ad dollars war between Facebook and Google, Munster said, “The sense is that Facebook is slowly grabbing attention from advertisers away from Google and video in particular.”
Google’s YouTube gets around 8 billion views a day while Facebook claims its daily views have increased from 1 billion to 4 billion. However, in its last earnings call, Google said YouTube views are at two-year highs. This, according to Munster, thickens the mystery over the video war between the two firms. The analyst believes, “at the end of the day both of them are really well positioned for what is a secular growth theme.”
Muster believes the social networker has done a good work of “leaning into the news feed,” and going forward more ad dollars will move towards Facebook. More details on the firm’s video wins will be available when it reports its quarterly earnings after the market-hours.
Facebook already bigger than YouTube?
Despite the race between the two tech firms, there is a growing belief that Facebook is already much bigger than rival YouTube. With over 1.5 billion active users, the social networker’s user base is already 50% more than that of YouTube’s. Apart from the massive user base, the company enables personalized video at scale. This not only helps in attracting users, but also pushes users to promote and share the videos with friends, and this is something not happening on YouTube.
Facebook’s News Feed is a place where a user spends a lot of his or her time. Almost 60% of users agree that News Feed is their primary source for news. More importantly, around 75% of the Facebook videos are seen on mobile devices, compared to just 50% for YouTube.
Speaking of mobile, Facebook owns Instagram, which has a user base of over 300 million. Last year, Instagram unveiled video advertising with impressive results. Apart from Instagram, the social networker also owns WhatsApp, which is nearing 1 billion users, and Oculus VR, which could turn into a valuable video advertising platform. And let’s not forget Atlas, the ad server technology which Facebook acquired last year. The technology goes beyond Facebook’s own desktop and mobile assets to offer all digital advertising platforms.
