Facebook’s Indus­try Research revealed on Jan. 7, 2015, “In just one year, the num­ber of video posts per per­son has increased 75% glob­al­ly and 94% in the US.” Evan James of Social­bak­ers observed on Jan. 8, 2015, “Face­book Video is Now Big­ger than YouTube for Brands.” And Garett Sloane of Adweek report­ed on Jan. 13, 2015, “After the Avengers: Age of Ultron teas­er aired, the full trail­er shot to more than a mil­lion views with­in the hour on Face­book.” Based on these posts and sto­ries, should senior mar­keters start shift­ing a sig­nif­i­cant per­cent­age of their video mar­ket­ing bud­gets from YouTube to Face­book?

Before you jump on the Face­book video band­wag­on, you should weigh all the pros and cons. After you have, don’t be sur­prised if you dis­cov­er that the reports of YouTube’s death are great­ly exag­ger­at­ed.

Growth Of Video Uploads

For exam­ple, it’s true that mobile tech­nol­o­gy, which allows peo­ple to have a cam­era with them at all times to cap­ture and share videos, is dri­ving the growth of video posts on Face­book. But, this devel­op­ment is also dri­ving even faster growth of video uploads to YouTube.

Accord­ing to Face­book Inter­nal Data on con­tent cre­ation, the num­ber of video posts per per­son has increased 75 per­cent glob­al­ly in just one year. By com­par­i­son, the amount of video con­tent uploaded to YouTube glob­al­ly increased 200 per­cent from 100 hours a minute to 300 hours a minute dur­ing the same peri­od.

Direct Uploading vs. Sharing

It’s also true that brands are upload­ing more videos to Face­book direct­ly instead of shar­ing YouTube videos. So, if all your friends were going to jump off a bridge, would you jump, too?

Con­sid­er this: If you upload a video to YouTube, you can share it to Face­book, Twit­ter, Google+, Tum­blr, Pin­ter­est, and oth­er social media plat­forms. This improves your content’s dis­cov­er­abil­i­ty and can sig­nif­i­cant­ly increase your video’s “watch time,” which is YouTube’s most impor­tant rank­ing fac­tor.

If you upload a video to Face­book direct­ly, it’s much hard­er to use oth­er social media to improve your content’s dis­cov­er­abil­i­ty and any time spent watch­ing your Face­book video doesn’t do squat for your video’s rank­ing in YouTube, which is the world’s sec­ond largest search engine behind only Google.

So, if you cre­ate and upload two ver­sions of a video, one to Face­book and the oth­er to YouTube, then it actu­al­ly costs you more and hurts your YouTube rank­ing. You’re still bet­ter off shar­ing your YouTube video to your Face­book page.

Advertising & Viewability

If your brand is one of the thou­sands of adver­tis­ers using True­View in-stream ads, then stick­ing with a YouTube-first strat­e­gy isn’t crazy. With True­View video ads, you pay only when some­one choos­es to watch your ad, so you don’t waste mon­ey adver­tis­ing to peo­ple who aren’t inter­est­ed in your busi­ness.

By com­par­i­son, Pre­mi­um Video Ads on Face­book start play­ing with­out sound as peo­ple scroll past. If peo­ple tap the 15-sec­ond Face­book video ad, it will expand into a full-screen view and sound will start. But Pre­mi­um Video Ads on Face­book are bought based on Tar­get­ed Gross Rat­ing Points, not taps. So, you are charged even when some­one scrolls past your ad but doesn’t choose to watch it.

Accord­ing to com­Score Video Metrix, Google sites, dri­ven pri­mar­i­ly by video view­ing at YouTube, ranked as the top online video con­tent prop­er­ty in Novem­ber 2014 with 162.2 mil­lion unique view­ers in the U.S. AOL ranked sec­ond with 103.7 mil­lion view­ers, fol­lowed by Face­book with 95 mil­lion. And that’s just a com­par­i­son of the web­sites.

Recent­ly, Neal Mohan, Google’s Vice Pres­i­dent, Video & Dis­play Adver­tis­ing, announced on the Dou­bleClick Adver­tis­er Blog that “more than 30 main­stays of video adver­tis­ing – broad­cast­ers, pre­mi­um pub­lish­ers and major brands – have joined our pre­mi­um video mar­ket­place, Google Part­ner Select.” This includes: CBS Inter­ac­tive, Fox News, Dis­cov­ery, Ani­mal Plan­et, TLC, HGTV, Food Net­work, Cook­ing Chan­nel, Trav­el Chan­nel, Hearst Tele­vi­sion, Rolling Stone, Us Week­ly, Men’s Fit­ness, and PGA Tour.

He also announced that Google would be “rolling out viewa­bil­i­ty report­ing across our ad plat­forms. This will, for the first time, inform brands whether their video ads on dig­i­tal chan­nels were actu­al­ly seen or not (as opposed to, for exam­ple, appear­ing off-screen, going unwatched or being swiped past).” Face­book doesn’t offer adver­tis­ers any­thing like Google Part­ner Select or viewa­bil­i­ty report­ing across oth­er web­sites.

All Hype?

It’s true that the “Avengers: Age of Ultron” trail­er shot to more than a mil­lion views with­in the hour on Face­book. But, as Sloane’s sto­ry in Adweek not­ed, “The YouTube counter does not quite tal­ly as fast, but it was clear­ly get­ting more atten­tion on Face­book from the start. By today, how­ev­er, YouTube showed more views with 7.5 mil­lion com­pared to 5.4 mil­lion on Face­book.”

That’s why many senior mar­keters may decide to stick with a YouTube-first strat­e­gy, even if Face­book videos are becom­ing more pow­er­ful.