Through conversations with our partners over the past year, we’ve been able to better understand the growing challenge of reaching audiences within a premium, brand safe video environment. Particularly as streaming services command more and more consumer time and attention.

We launched the Watch tab on Facebook in August 2017 to create a front door to video on the platform. In Watch, people can find videos from publishers and creators, along with Facebook Originals, live sports, and more. As of last December, there were already more than 400 million people monthly and 75 million people daily who spend at least one minute on Watch around the world. And on average, these 75 million daily visitors spend more than 20 minutes in Watch.[[1] This platform allowed us to build a valuable experience for consumers, and new ad opportunities for you.

You may be familiar with In-Stream Reserve, which allows you to run in the top-tier of video content across Facebook. This year, we built on that opportunity and rolled out Facebook Showcase: the only way to buy that premium inventory upfront, at a fixed cost, through a managed service. Showcase campaigns align to how you do business: they’re bought on an insertion order and guaranteed against Nielsen demographics.

What makes this content ecosystem premium? There are three pieces to this, and they get to the core of what Showcase offers.

 First is the hard to reach audiences that are watching longer form video. On average every month, nearly 100M people in the US watch In-Stream Reserve eligible content[2]. That’s equivalent to more than 1/3 of the US TV universe[4]. And, 43% of our viewers are 18-34[3], compared to 29% of the TV universe in the demo[4].

Next, we hand curate the best content on our platform for In-Stream Reserve based on retentiveness, intentionality, popularity, quality, and brand safety. But brand safety isn’t just a feature of Showcase – it’s a core pillar of the offering. All In-Stream Reserve content is reviewed for the same sensitive categories as broadcast and follows our robust publisher and content level reviews. In-stream ads only appear in video content that meets our community and monetization guidelines, and go through human review prior to an ad being served.

Showcase was designed to let you to accurately reach hard-to-find audiences, through longer form content in a brand safe environment, aligned to the ways you already buy. We are excited to continue building solutions that meet your needs and ultimately help grow your businesses.

Erik Geisler

Director, North America Agency

 

Erik leads the Facebook North America Agency team, based in New York. His team’s mission is to advance the value that agencies bring their partners through the relentless pursuit of progress. Prior to Facebook, Erik has founded several companies under the common theme of “changing the way brands advertise”. In 1994, he was a founding partner at Student Advantage, a college marketing company that is credited with establishing the benefits of Youth and Student marketing. In 2005, as a partner and Chief Strategy Officer, his digital agency produced the first ever marketing campaign on Facebook for Chase credit card services.

 

Sources:

1. Facebook data. Global. December 2018.
2. Facebook internal data across surfaces including Watch, News Feed and Pages. US only, people 18+. Data averaged across Nov 7, 2018-Jan 31, 2019. “In-Stream Reserve video viewers” are defined as people that spent at least one minute watching a video at least 3 minutes in length, from an in-stream reserve qualified Page.
3. Facebook internal data across surfaces including Watch, News Feed and Pages. US only, people 18+. Nov 7, 2018-Jan 31, 2019. “In-Stream Reserve video viewers” are defined as people that spent at least one minute watching a video at least 3 minutes in length, from an In-Stream Reserve qualified page.
4. Nielsen National Universe Estimates, US only, people 18+, November 7, 2018 – January 31, 2019.