Videos increase people’s understanding of your product or service by 74%, according to Digital Sherpa. It’s only natural that Facebook is rolling out “recommended videos” within the mobile newsfeed. Facebook’s recommended videos is not like YouTube’s related videos section. Instead, after viewing a video on Facebook, you’ll see related videos from both your friends and other users below. By serving up relevant video content within the newsfeed, Facebook makes it easy to pause, view and continue scrolling.
For now, all video recommendations will be user-generated content uploaded within Facebook, which means no YouTube, Vine videos or advertisements will be featured. However, that may change in the near future. Most likely, Facebook will use recommended videos to provide additional targeting options to marketers based on content viewing interests and video engagement to allow for more personalized advertising experiences.
Not coincidentally, Facebook is also rolling out in-feed video advertisements in the next few months and may eventually use the recommended videos real estate to feature brand advertising. According to Mashable, news feed video ads will auto-play, but are soundless until clicked.