Some colleagues, a senior client and I recently spent a day meeting the two rivals, Google and Facebook, one after the other. It’s a very special experience – like visiting Athens and Sparta in the same day. To my colleague Rob Davis, who runs our video practice, it made concrete a general sense of impending battle. Rob has started to distinguish the video networks between those that are “ephemeral” and those that are “archival”. Ephemeral networks achieve maximum impact in the moment. They are designed for interaction. Video viewing is just one feature the network’s community uses. They have little search value, as they don’t prioritize the archiving and storage of video. Facebook, Instagram, SnapChat and Periscope are all examples of ephemeral networks. This category is growing fast. Archival networks give a place to host and arrange content specifically for the video viewing experience. These networks are designed for watching video. They have tremendous search impact and serve as the go-to place for someone seeking video. YouTube, Vimeo and DailyMotion are among the remaining archival networks. Most others have ceased operation. “The message is the message – and it can be influenced by the medium.” By late 2014, YouTube touted the delivery of 4 billion video views per day. No other platform came close. Facebook was delivering about 25 per cent as many videos. But by the time YouTube reached its 10th birthday in February 2015, something had changed. Facebook claimed it earned as many views as YouTube and would soon release data showing it had eclipsed YouTube’s daily viewership. Facebook’s dramatic increase in video views was driven by technological tweaks rather than a groundswell of viewership. They introduced auto-play videos, which would start playing as the user slowly scrolled over them, and began counting these automatic engagements as a “view”, a sleight of hand that immediately doubled the daily view count. In contrast, YouTube only counted a view when the user clicked the play button. The new strategy essentially doubled views overnight.