As it rolls out its Watch video offering, Facebook has enlisted the YouTube content company mitú to create shows with particular appeal to Latino millennials.
The programming will be based on popular titles already on the platform, "Mom's Movie Reviews" and "What's Good in Your Hood." The former is a review show featuring a Latino mother and her son. The latter is a food show.
mitú, which is distributed beyond YouTube on Snapchat Discover and Comcast Watchable, claims 600 million monthly views. It has raised $43 million in financial backing from Verizon, ad agency giant WPP and Awesomeness TV.
While mitú has gained scale as a major creative force among the 30 million young U.S. Latinos, its posture toward Facebook versus other social networks sheds interesting light on the overall programming landscape.
Watch on Facebook, meanwhile, has been launching fully funded programming to laptops and desktops this month, with mobile soon to follow. It has tapped a wide range of creators, from social gurus like Tastemade to traditional players like Hearst.
"With the launch of Watch, Facebook is evolving into a platform where you go for more premium content experiences," National Geographic SVP of audience development and strategy told Digiday. "Watch is intended to become that lean-back video experience you haven't traditionally seen on Facebook."
The drive toward video, which unsettles many in the TV space given that Facebook and Google together control almost 80 cents of every dollar spent on digital ads, has been emphasized by founder Mark Zuckerberg.
Last February, during an earnings conference call with Wall Street analysts, he described video as a "mega-trend, same order as mobile."
Article updated Aug. 31 to correct company and product names.