With Facebook gobbling up video marketing share, you have a tough choice. Should you use Facebook or YouTube? Find out from i5ww.

Facebook now gets more video views than YouTube. In August of last year, Facebook had 1 billion more views than YouTube.

Does that mean you need to scrap YouTube in favor of Facebook?

Maybe…and maybe not.

Take a look at the ins’n’outs of the two video giants:

YouTube’s Far from Dead

If anyone tells you not to use YouTube because it’s dying, don’t listen to them. YouTube still has more than 1 billion active users.

Plus, according to VentureBeat, their monthly hours viewed are up 50% year-over-year. That points to the strengths of YouTube, if anything.

Facebook’s a Strong Contender – Here’s Why

A Mixpo report shows marketers and agencies are more willing to use Facebook than ever. They’re doing this for two reasons:

1. Facebook offers precision audience targeting options YouTube doesn’t have
2. Marketers view engagement as the most important metric, and Facebook delivers better engagement rates than YouTube

But YouTube’s Not Going Away!

That’s because it drives so many views because of its SEO power. It’s going to keep that SEO power because Google owns it.

So the long-term value of YouTube may be far greater than that of Facebook. YouTube brings in about $4 billion for Google, but it doesn’t make a profit. So, it’ll be interesting to see how Google positions YouTube in the future.

So Which Should You Use?

It depends on what you want to do. With Facebook, you tend to get higher engagement rates for shorter periods of time. At YouTube, you get more long-term views.

So if you need to drive more customers in now, Facebook’s a better bet. If your business is doing okay at this minute, go with a mix of Facebook and YouTube.

Some other considerations:

• YouTube shares 55% of any advertising revenues your video makes with you. It’s tough to make a substantial amount of money with YouTube videos. But it’s a nice bonus.
• Facebook’s already a leading source for small business marketing. It’s a known working quantity.
• Facebook’s algorithm, of course, favors Facebook videos over YouTube ones.
• Facebook videos autoplay once they appear on user’s screens, but YouTube videos do not.
• However, YouTube’s still one of the largest search engines on the web. So there’s still plenty of opportunity to get in front of your B2B audience.
• With YouTube, you can optimize your video for popular searches.

The Verdict: No Clear Answer Right Now

There is no straight answer to which of these sites you should use. With competition from Facebook heating up, who knows how Google will respond with YouTube in the future?

For now, you don’t waste your marketing budget with either of these video leaders.