Facebook Watch audience is growing rapidly

Publication date: 16 June 2019

Monthly and daily audience on Facebook Watch has reached 720 million and 140 million users respectively. In its statistics, Facebook counts only the visitors who spend at least one minute watching video. On average, visitors spend more than 26 minutes on Facebook Watch every day.

Over the past six month, the audience has grown nearly twice, from 400 million monthly and 75 million daily users in December.

Facebook is trying to encourage its Watch users to interact instead of being passive and solitary content consumers. For this reason, Facebook Watch has started offering its users personalized recommendations for groups to join based on their viewing history. For example, if a user is watching a show on Facebook Watch, (s)he will see the show’s official group alongside the video.

Facebook is also testing several new features allowing users to search for videos that are popular with their friends and to use a section dedicated to co-watching experiences. The company believes that users comment on videos eight times more often when co-watching than they do when watching on their own.

To maintain the quality and variety of content, Facebook is creating an ad-supported ecosystem. Publishers and creators can use ad breaks to monetize their audience. Ad breaks are now available in more than 40 countries. Over the past year, the number of pages using ad breaks has more than tripled. The number of pages earning over $1,000 per month on video ads has increased by more than eight times. The number of pages earning over $10,000 per month has grown three times.