Facebook boosts longform content with revised video rankings

Facebook has made a change to how its news feed surfaces relevant videos, placing more emphasis on longer content.

The percentage of a video watched is one indication Facebook uses to determine how much a user has enjoyed it, and now the social network will consider completing a longer video a “bigger commitment than completing a shorter one”.

“As we continue to understand how our community consumes video, we’ve realised that we should therefore weight percent completion more heavily the longer a video is, to avoid penalising longer videos,” said Facebook product manager Abhishek Bapna and research scientist Seyoung Park in a blog post announcing the move.

“While we expect that most pages will not see significant changes in distribution as a result of this update, longer videos that people spend time watching may see a slight increase in distribution on Facebook — so people who find longer videos engaging may be able to discover more of them in news feed. As a side effect, some shorter videos may see a slight dip in news feed distribution.”

Facebook said the change will roll out gradually over the coming weeks and will only apply to organic videos, not video ad distribution.