Social media is becoming a key traffic driver to online video. A report published (.pdf) by Brightcove and TubeMogul this week found that Facebook and Twitter are growing faster than search in sending traffic to video clips.
While Facebook and Twitter are growing faster, the search engines still send more traffic — 64% comes from Google, followed by Yahoo at 11.9%, Facebook at 4.3%, Bing 2.6% and Twitter 1.2%, says the report. But at current rates, “Facebook will surpass Yahoo! within the year to be second only to Google in referral traffic to online video content,” the report explains. And that’s not all:
“Facebook and Twitter tended to refer more engaged viewers than search engines. Broadcasters saw the highest engagement levels from Facebook, while Twitter held the top spot in terms of engagement for music videos. Google referred the most engaged viewers for the newspaper vertical, while Bing was tops for the magazine and radio industry verticals.”
All the more reason to allow people to share your video… prominently.