Facebook Rolls Out 15-second Auto-Playing Premium Video Ads
Facebook has announced it is going to run 15-seconds (auto playing) premium video ads on its news feed, which was in testing from December. Users are not going to be thrilled to see video ads popping-in their screens, especially when it auto-plays the content. But the silver lining is that there will be no sound.
The social networking site works with a selected group of advertisers in this initiative. Users should see the ads over the next few months.
According to Facebook's Blog Post, "Each 15-seconds video ad will start playing without any sound as it appears on screen and stop if people scroll past. If people tap the video, it will expand into a full-screen view and the sound will start."
Also, Facebook plans to sell and measure the premium vdeo ads similar to tv ads based on targeted gross rating points to reach a specific audience over a short period of time. The ad delivery will be measured by Nielsen Online Campaign Ratings (OCR), and the advertisers will pay based on what Nielsen OCR measures.
To make premium video ads match the other content quality in the news feed, Facebook works with a company named Ace Metrix to help them assess the engagement factor for each ad before it appears on Facebook. Ace Metrix could help it measure the creative quality of the video in the Facebook ecosystem.
This company can also help spotlight the performance indicators for advertisers. Facebook claimed it is doing this to maintain high-quality ads and help the advertisers get a good return on investment by informing them of what works and what doesn't.
Users should be able to get rid of the ads with the help of apps like AdBlock, if they access Facebook from a desktop browser but the same might not be true with smartPhones.
Facebook continues to be one of the addictive social networking sites and we probably need something more than autoplay ads to make users give up on them.
Will this auto-playing ads make users leave Facebook for good?