Video is eating social media. AI will feed it.

Social media are becoming video platforms. TikTok and YouTube were built around video, Instagram has been moving in that direction for years, and even Facebook may offer publishers more potential than they realise.

The report provides a striking example. For the median Facebook account, video represented only 8.7% of all posts. Yet among the 79 accounts with enough video and non-video content to compare, video generated more interactions per post in 75 cases. The median advantage was 3.31 times.

These numbers do not prove that simply publishing more video will improve results. The analysis cannot separate editorial quality from paid promotion, audience size or recommendation algorithms. Still, the gap is too large to ignore. Many publishers may be underusing video on Facebook or treating it as an afterthought added to a finished article.

At the same time, platforms are tightening their grip on distribution. Meta One introduces paid options for clickable links in Instagram posts and Reels, while Meta has also tested limits on free external-link posts for selected Facebook Pages and professional accounts. These restrictions are not universal, but the signal to publishers is clear: Meta would rather keep audiences watching and scrolling than send them to an external news site.

This makes native video more important - and publishers more dependent on platforms they do not control.