POV: Facebook Watch European Expansion

Background:

Facebook announced the expansion of its Facebook Watch platform in Europe this week at the annual MIPCOM conference held in Cannes, France.

Details and Implications:

Facebook Watch is a video on demand service for sharing long and short-form original video content. The original content creators collect 55% of ad revenue generated through mid-roll ads on the platform against their content.

Already popular in the US (720 million users every month with 140 million people spending at least one minute a day on the platform) Facebook intends to further expand Watch in Europe to try and generate better viewing figures in the region.

Facebook will focus on celebrities and influencers to maximise attention on the platform and will be driven by new partnerships with large media publishers. In the UK these include LadBible, Tastemade and Copa90 and in Germany, Brainpool and Burta, whilst in France Facebook has done a deal with M6. 

UK shows include: a reality TV show created by LadBible; a ‘Sunday Football Roast’ show by Copa90 - in which comedians will make fun of one another based on the football teams they support – and a weekly series from Tastemade involving celebrities such as Conor Maynard.

In Germany, rapper Eko Fresh has been signed up for weekly episodes created by Brainpool. In Italy Ciaopeople has signed up top Italian influencers Camihawke and Alice Venturi to discuss life in their 30s. In Spain, 2btube has gathered a number of Spanish influencers to participate in cooking challenges.

In France, M6 will be posting over 1,000 clips on Watch over the next year, of which, 200 of those will be created exclusively for the platform.

The new publishers join those already on the platform that include BBC News, Le Monde, and C4 News. However, these new collaborations focus on content that is designed to draw more viewers to the platform through focusing on ‘digital publishers with beloved creators and public figures who have established communities on Facebook’ in order to attract their fanbases to the platform.

Summary:

Video is the future of digital media and the battleground for eyeballs is crowded - TikTok, YouTube, Netflix et al. Facebook is hoping that its continued investment in original programming will push its service into the forefront of this battle.

Further Reading: The Drum | Variety | Adweek | Facebook | Social Media Today