Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB), on Monday, announced that it is making few alterations to the video ranking algorithm for News Feed. The frequency of video on any user’s News feed will be determined after analyzing whether a video clips shown on the user’s personal profile page are watched and what is the duration. Users who watch videos often will get more of them in their feeds. On the other hand, seldom viewers will get less video in their feed.
Facebook focusing on video monetization
Apart from viewing tendency, Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB) also tracks comments, likes and shares. This new change would not affect the third-party video sites. The social networking giant posted in a blog post that the improvements are being made on the basis of user’s frequency and duration of watching a video along with factors like comments and shares. The blog stated that it will help the company in personalizing the News Feed according to the preferences of the users who watch video.
“In our early tests, this improvement resulted in more people watching more videos that are relevant to them”, stated Facebook in its blog post.
Just a couple of weeks ago, the social networker announced that users interested in video would see more video ads compared to the image based ads. The new change will just identify the users who are more interested in watching videos.
Analyst view the move as positive
The probable reason behind Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB)’s changes could be that the company is very active in offering the content to the people according to their preferences. Another reason could be the video ads, which the company is offering to the users and by identifying the video watching habits it can get a better insight into the interest of users on the video ads. The success of its video ad is directly proportional to the video watching habit of the people.
Cantor Fitzgerald’s Youssef Squali views early results of Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB)’s video rankings tests as positive way and would probably enhance the monetization.
Squali, also, believes that video ads are capable of generating at least $1 billion in revenue over the next few years. Squali maintained Buy rating on the stock.
