Facebook will tell publishers, creators the top Pages that shared their videos

Facebook will give brands, publishers and creators a better idea of who’s contributing to their videos’ viewership on the social network.

Facebook is rolling out a new tab to all Pages globally that will list the top five Pages that reshared the videos they posted to Facebook, the company announced on Wednesday. The five Pages are selected and ordered based on the number of views that their reshares generated.

The new Highlighted Shares metrics can be accessed through the Video Insights tab available within Facebook’s Page Insights section. For each video, the Highlighted Shares will detail the number of views; total number of likes, comments and shares; and the average amount of time people spent watching the reshared video through each Page.

Facebook’s Highlighted Shares shows the top five Pages that have reshared a Page’s video.

Facebook’s motivation in opening up the new analytics appears to be that showing Pages which other Pages are helping to spread their videos on Facebook could lead to those Pages collaborating, borrowing an old page from YouTube’s playbook encouraging its creators to collaborate in order to grow their respective audiences. It could also spur more branded-content deals between marketers and publishers or creators. That has been a big push by Facebook since it dropped its branded-content restrictions in April 2016. Facebook added to that push earlier this year when it made it easier for brands to promote these branded-content posts as ads on Facebook.

About The Author

Tim Peterson

Tim Peterson, Third Door Media’s Social Media Reporter, has been covering the digital marketing industry since 2011. He has reported for Advertising Age, Adweek and Direct Marketing News. A born-and-raised Angeleno who graduated from New York University, he currently lives in Los Angeles. He has broken stories on Snapchat’s ad plans, Hulu founding CEO Jason Kilar’s attempt to take on YouTube and the assemblage of Amazon’s ad-tech stack; analyzed YouTube’s programming strategy, Facebook’s ad-tech ambitions and ad blocking’s rise; and documented digital video’s biggest annual event VidCon, BuzzFeed’s branded video production process and Snapchat Discover’s ad load six months after launch. He has also developed tools to monitor brands’ early adoption of live-streaming apps, compare Yahoo’s and Google’s search designs and examine the NFL’s YouTube and Facebook video strategies.