A large number of Facebook users are still unaware of the company’s on-demand “Watch” video service, according to a new survey by The Diffusion Group (TDG). The research group surveyed 1,632 Facebook users recently and the results suggested that exactly half (50-percent) had never heard of the Facebook Watch service. Furthermore, the remaining 50-percent who had heard of the service included 24-percent who reported they had never used the service. Of the other 26-percent (who had heard of the service and used it), this was broken down to include 6-percent who said they use Watch on a daily basis, with that number rising to 8-percent for those who use Watch on a weekly basis. While 4-percent said they use it one or two times a month, and 3-percent reported using the service once a month. Lastly, 5-percent said that although they had used the service before, they had not recently.
While it is worth taking into consideration the sample size here is pretty low compared to the general Facebook populous, the results would seem to suggest that awareness is only half the issue Facebook faces when trying to get more people to engage with the service. With only 14-percent of people surveyed stating they use the service at least once a week, and 79-percent saying they had either never heard of the service, not used the service ever, or not used the service recently. However, TDG President, Michael Greeson, accompanied the results with the statement that Facebook Watch should not be totally defined by results like this. Suggesting that firstly it was never Facebook’s goal to achieve high-levels of engagement with its initial original video content service, and secondly, Facebook will be looking at the video segment as a long-term investment.
Facebook Watch originally launched back in August of 2017 and therefore this survey was designed to highlight the impact of the service a year later. In spite of its initial limited availability, the service did quickly become available to all users within the US. Since then, the social media giant has been continuing to push forward with its video ambitions, including adding new features to Watch, such as Watch Party – which lets Facebook users watch content en masse.