Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB) Planning A YouTube Like Platform [Report]

Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB) is planning to bring a YouTube like video platform, according to Macquarie securities analyst Ben Schachter. The analyst said that the social networking is all set to launch a competitor to YouTube to expand the archive of user-generated video content, and most probably they will attract or buy professional content also.

Huge potential for digital advertising revenue

Within the report, Schachter notes that the video advertising dollars will be the next major growth opportunity for Google, Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB), Amazon, Yahoo, AOL and Twitter. According to the analyst estimates, the digital advertising revenue is estimated to grow around $70 billion driven mainly by the largest online ad companies between 2014 and 2018.

Schachter writes in a research note, “We think the next 12 [to] 24 months will see new efforts to more aggressively court television advertising dollars.” The report also talks about a possibility of the growth in the digital online advertising without television dollars. Schachter explains about the top 12 public online ad-focuses companies, and how they are totaling for more than two-third of the digital ad market, and it is expected that this share would surge to more than 85% by 2018, not including China.

Google, Facebook two big players

Two major shareholders are Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB) and Google account for 60% to 75% of the total worldwide digital ad forecast. Report takes into consideration, mobile, video and social formats as the main industry growth drivers. However, it also mentions that TV and desktop Internet will increase at average rates whereas radio and print will take a plunge.

According to Schacheter both Facebook and Google will expand their market share as they are looking forward to penetrate in the TV ad market in a more concentrated way through premium video ad units and brand-based campaigns. Schacheter said that analysts are very much expecting Facebook to launch a competitor against the YouTube, a focused repository for uploading and storing user-created content.

Separately, the largest social networking company recently stated that it will launch more Auto-play videos. Additionally, Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB) said ‘eligible’ video advertisement for apps will be able to play automatically on Facebook’s mobile software. Mobile apps have been showing video ads in between, but the automatic playback is a unique feature. Users have the option to ignore these ads previously, but now there are better chances that these ads would get the attention of the users, especially when number of mobile users is increasing.