Emotion is the driving force of storytelling in video. Being emotionally engaged keeps viewers watching and also prompts social actions like sharing, commenting, and liking. Viewers desire and respond to emotional experiences, and recent research shows that this is true for all video on social – including those created by hard news organizations.

The Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism recently published a fascinating report on The Future of Online News Video. It takes a hard, statistical look at news video and news publishers online and in the social space. There’s a wealth of valuable data for news organizations and video creators, but one of the biggest... Read more

As video became the leading form of content on social media, you may have noticed that the videos popping up in your feeds got shorter and shorter. This isn’t by design of the social networks (although platforms like Instagram and Snapchat do restrict video length) – rather, it’s the result of short-form video having consistently... Read more

For a long time, online marketers’ favorite success metric was number of views. The assumption was that getting a lot of views meant your content or ad was good and your message was getting through. But as the web and its consumers have evolved, we’ve learned that’s not necessarily the case.

Facebook recently announced major updates to their News Feed that have big implications for publishers. Content shared by users’ friends and family will rank higher, appearing higher in feeds. Content that Facebook’s algorithms believe you’ll find informative and entertaining – regardless of its source – are also being prioritized in this update. These updates mean publishers... Read more

In April of this year, Facebook opened the gates of its Instant Articles feature, which now incorporates videos, to all publishers on the platform, regardless of size or location. Previously, the feature had only been open to a select group of major publishers, while Facebook perfected Instant Articles. What exactly is this feature, and why... Read more