What Goes Viral on YouTube vs Facebook? (Archive, 2021)

Recorded in April 2021 during Simon's s.media agency era — a team compilation. Published as part of a dated historical record; platform figures are as they stood in 2021.

How different are the two platforms really?

Video is king, and as advertisers we need to think about where we place it. Facebook drives 8 billion average daily views, with people five times more likely to watch on mobile than desktop; YouTube attracts a third of internet users, and studies showed Gen Z preferred YouTube as their way of consuming media. On YouTube, music videos, songs and movie trailers perform best — worth considering when you choose what to place your ads in front of.

Why does interruption land differently on each?

In the old TV days, advertising simply interrupted people and hoped to entertain. Facebook inherited that: ads, branded content and paid influencer posts break into the stream of what you're actually there for — seeing what your family and mates are doing. If an ad for a car pops up mid-scroll, it's in the way, and it peeves people off.

YouTube is different, because people are there for a reason — they searched for something. I watch a lot of car content that's openly sponsored, with product placement throughout, and I don't mind, because I'm leaning into the content. The stats back it up: people are more likely to buy from brands they've seen in that context — where the interest already is — than from brands that interrupted them. If you're weighing up paid influencers and product placement, think carefully about the channel, because YouTube has a distinct advantage there.

What's the digestible-versus-episodic rule?

People love to slam one platform to praise the other. Don't pick a side — make content that works on both, and the two terms to remember are digestible and episodic.

On Facebook, video pops up and you watch what appears in your feed — so it suits digestible content: short, snappy, information delivered fast. On YouTube the user is in charge: they search for what they want, choose the vlog or the unboxing or the tutorial — and they want longer videos, often one after another, working through a playlist. That's episodic. Make your Facebook content short-form and digestible, and your YouTube content longer-form and built into episodes, and the platforms work in harmony rather than competition.

How does the same how-to content change shape?

How-to videos do well everywhere — they're evergreen, shareable, and they either match an interest or spark one; the lockdown skills boom proved it. But the format differs. On Facebook, a how-to works as a checklist: here's x, y and z, some quick tips, done. On YouTube, the how-tos that win are longer and descriptive — a deep dive into one topic. A beauty guide on Facebook is a handful of tips; on YouTube it's an in-depth walkthrough of the products, how they work together, and the application, step by step.

What actually goes viral on each?

On Facebook, it's the video itself that goes viral: an overall message, a person as its subject, often a comedy element — the LADbible style. On YouTube it's quite different: the character goes viral. It's the channel, and the person who keeps reappearing on it, that becomes the draw — because when people watch YouTube they want to immerse themselves in somebody's lifestyle. What they eat for breakfast, their workout, their weekend. People want authentic storytelling and a glimpse into ordinary lives around the world — and that is what goes viral on YouTube.