The world’s largest social network Facebook is testing mid-roll ads for videos that are viewed for at least 20 seconds, a report published in Recode claimed citing unnamed industry sources.
The social network has already been testing the ads that run in the middle of videos on Facebook Live, but the new move would extend the program into regular videos, and would help Facebook generate more cash from the clips posted on its platform by publishers.
Every day, Facebook users view billions of clips on the platform, which means there are tremendous prospects for revenue generation for the social network. Recode says Facebook will offer 55 percent of the sales to ad revenue to publishers. Although, ads in video will be limited to 15 seconds in length, Facebook’s 1.8 billion users could feel irked by these ads which were, until now, limited to sponsored posts only.
“By only allowing ads 20 seconds into a video, Facebook is taking an interesting approach by sending a clear message to publishers—create engaging content, or else your ads won’t be seen,” commented Joe Hyland, CMO of webinar platform ON24.
“Facebook realizes that with video, engagement is more valuable than just clicks. I think it’s a shrewd move by Facebook to ensure only the most engaging content makes its way onto the platform.”
Dan Rose, Facebook Vice President of Partnerships had hinted at such a move last fall while speaking with Poynter.
“Next year, we’re going to be looking at ways to apply the ad break model to regular videos on Facebook, videos that are not live,” he said.
“Videos that are producing and publishing. We’re not there yet. Over the next few months, we’re going to be expanding the ad break within live videos. But early next year, we hope to be able to talk more about how that same idea could apply to regular videos as well.”
Facebook, headquartered in Menlo Park, California, U.S., is the largest social networking website in the world. The Facebook website was launched in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg, along with fellow Harvard College students Andrew McCollum, Eduardo Saverin, Chris Hughes, and Dustin Moskovitz. Initially, the websites membership was limited to Harvard students, but it was later expanded to include higher education institutions in the Boston area, the Ivy League schools, and Stanford University. Since 2006, anyone aged 13 or above can register on the website.
By late 2007, there were 100,000 business pages on Facebook. These pages were created by companies to promote themselves and attract customers. On October 24, 2007, Microsoft revealed to have purchased a 1.6% share of Facebook for $240 million. Once year later, Facebook announced its plan to set up its international headquarters in Dublin, Ireland.
In July 2010, the company announced to have touched the milestone of 500 million users, making it the world’s largest online social network at the time. At that time, almost half of the Facebook users were using the site daily, for an average of 34 minutes (according to the company’s data).
According to SecondMarket Inc., Facebook’s value in November 2010 was $41 billion, making it the third largest American web company after Google and Amazon.
The initial public offering of Facebook was held in February 2012. Three months later, the company started selling stock to the public, and reached an original peak market capitalization of $104 billion. As of March 31, 2016, the social network had over 1.65 billion monthly active users, and it is now also the world’s most popular social networking site based on the number of active user accounts.
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