Facebook Chief Product Officer Chris Cox holds up a Mevo, the first camera for live Facebook video, during the keynote address at the F8 Facebook Developer Conference in April. (Eric Risberg, Associated Press)
SAN FRANCISCO — Live video is the ticket for Internet companies and Facebook is the early front-runner.
That’s according to Scott Kessler, head of technology research at S&P Global Market Intelligence.
“We see a growing market opportunity for video and live video offerings, users, engagement and advertising revenues, and believe Facebook is the best positioned among the publicly traded companies we cover,” Kessler said in a research note on Monday. “We are also watching privately held Snapchat, which according to an unconfirmed report from Bloomberg, is going provide video highlights from this summer’s Olympics.”
With the quality of smartphone cameras and ease of video-streaming apps, more people are experimenting with live video. Now, with a few taps of the smartphone, people can broadcast live to family and friends or to the world.
Facebook Live is in a major push to get more of its 1.65 billion users shooting and watching live streaming video on mobile devices. Facebook Live rolled out to celebrities and public figures last summer and more widely earlier this year. Demand for live video impressed CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who has made Facebook Live a top priority at Facebook.
Periscope, which Twitter bought last March, helped introduce mobile live streaming to the mainstream. In April, Twitter struck a deal to live-stream NFL games, including pre-game Periscope broadcasts with players and teams.
Google’s YouTube is said to be making its own mobile live video app, YouTube Connect, and last month YouTube began showing users live-stream 360-degree video. Snapchat, the messaging app popular with young people, has a channel for “live stories”— collections of current events from different people and perspectives.
Live videos isn’t just a tempting new distraction to keep people glued to services where they already lap up hours of video each day. Facebook, Google and Snapchat are looking for ways to run more video ads that command higher prices and could position them to crack open that big pot of dollars that marketers spend on television. In discussing street-beating first-quarter results, Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg pointed to video advertising as an area of strength for Facebook.
“We think video is arguably the single most important near-term growth driver for Internet content and related companies,” Kessler said. “Recently released data indicate that online video viewers increased 24% in February (comScore) and related advertising revenues rose 25% to 30% in 2015 (Interactive Advertising Bureau).”
In February, according to comScore, the publicly traded Internet software & services leaders in “video viewer reach” (calculated by dividing individual company viewer counts by the total viewing audience) were Alphabet (77%), Facebook (35%), Yahoo (25%) and Twitter (16%), Kessler noted.
Yahoo is in the midst of an auction process which could “negatively impact investment in and innovation around video,” Kessler said.
