Facebook May Roll Out Auto-Playing Video Ads On December 19th

There were quite a bit of rumors that Facebook was working on a video ad format since the beginning of the year. We had reported that Facebook was looking to ship this new format by June or July and was courting various advertising agencies in April of this year. Now, the Wall Street Journal is reporting that Facebook will launch the video ad feature on December 19th and one of the first ads will be the trailer for an upcoming movie called Divergent. The videos are specially produced for Facebook and are rumored to have a run time of 15 secs.

Recently, Facebook rolled out its video auto-play feature on both the web and mobile on official apps. We are not sure about how Facebook’s billion plus users will like the new auto-playing videos and ads as it suggests the loss of control over deciding what to watch on the social platform. Given the amount of opposition the company has faced for introducing advertising features in the past, these auto-play video ads will definitely be criticized when they are introduced and this is why the company launched auto-play for shared videos so as to get its users to accept this change easily. There is no information yet if these video ads will be restricted to the US or whether they will appear to all of Facebook’s users this week.

Video ads are a big proposition these days. In fact, if Facebook’s new ad efforts are successful in terms of reach and engagement, then it will definitely see a resurgence of more advertising money being pumped into the format, as more brands vie with each other to gain the attention of Facebook users. This could bring about a new way for advertisers and brands to view Facebook given the massive reach it has. Incremental innovation upon these initial ad formats could mean that in the next few years, social advertising could seriously compete with television advertising.

Source | WSJ

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