Video vs image posts: which goes viral more often?
A first-party look at 19,624 public Facebook posts, comparing how often each format beats its own account baseline.
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Across 19,624 posts, breaking outlier rate down by content type:
| Type | Median engagement | Beat baseline ≥5× |
|---|---|---|
| Video | 50 | 12.5% |
| Image | 21 | 6.3% |
| Text | 12 | 7.3% |
Video wins on both odds and average performance, but images make up 75.4% of all posts — a gap between what performs and what gets made. The lesson is not "only post video"; it is that video has the better odds of a breakout, so it deserves a bigger share than most accounts give it.
Any format can break out if it beats its baseline — test a post in the free Baseline Beat Checker, or read the full 19,624-post study.
FAQ
Are reels always better than photos?
On average video has ~2× the outlier rate and double the median engagement, but a photo that beats its baseline still beats a video that flops. Video simply has better odds.
How was this measured?
By baseline multiple — each post's engagement divided by the median of its own page — across 19,624 public posts. Figures are aggregate and anonymised.