With the prospect of adblockers on the new iPhone systems, its understandable to think about switching video advertising from Youtube to Facebook.

Facebook boasts 8 billion video views a day, and this figure seems to always be growing. So it seems a great idea to promote your video’s with them right?

Well, Facebook is quite dodgy when it comes to skewing figures and advertising. So beware.

With fan-page post deliverability being next to nothing unless you are paying for promotions, their video stats are just as alarming.

This animation video illustrates the situation perfectly.

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First of all, the reason why their daily video view rate is so high is because of their automatic play feature. Facebook counts 3 seconds worth of playtime as a ‘view’. So if you are scrolling down your feed slow enough, you will have inadvertently ‘viewed’ a lot of videos.

This false data is driving up demand for their advertising.

For a marketer looking at their advertising analytics, these false views can make an otherwise great video look like it’s not converting very well.

It’s not just fake views that are wrong with Facebook advertising.

Freebooting is another problem for a lot of video producers.

Freebooting is where a unscrupulous marketer screenshots a video, re-uploads it as their own and makes money off it through views and promotions. And Facebook may as well be encouraging it because they are making millions out of this problem.

The original producer may only receive a few thousand views on Youtube, yet a freebooter may attract hundreds of thousands… even millions making Facebook and the freebooter a lot of money.

If a video producer make a complaint about it, FB drags the complaint process out so that they can still profit from the infringement. By the time the video is pulled, FB and the freebooter have already made their money.

Facebook will do anything to compete with Google and Youtube. Dodgy stories like this are not uncommon when it comes to advertising with them.

FB freebooting

As far as a serious marketing campaign goes, buyer beware.