Facebook Officially Launches Video Ads
Facebook has finally, officially launched its video advertising platform. What does this mean for advertisers? For Facebook users? This is one of the most influential steps forward for the world’s largest social network since the introduction of Facebook Advertising. The social network has been working on incorporating video advertising into the platform for several years, and has finally made video ads visible in Facebook users’ news feeds.
For now, users will only see up to three video ads per day. This means, the average Facebooker will see about 90 ads per month. With over 600 million users – half of whom are in specially targeted markets for the video ad debut – it comes out to about 27 billion video ads every month. Facebook video ads are rumored to be priced at $1 to $2.5 million per ad, generating roughly $27 billion in revenue for the social network every month.
The video ads will auto-play, but the sound will be muted until the user clicks on the ad. This means, a Facebook user will be scrolling through his or her news feed, where a video ad will begin to play with no sound, and the user can choose whether or not to click on a moving picture to hear what the video advertisement is promoting. The video ads won’t take over the whole screen, or even force-interrupt a user’s actions on the social network, unless it is clicked on. Facebook users can simply keep scrolling past the video to ignore the ad.
Facebook recently teamed up with Publicis Omnicom Group, a large video advertising organization with experience in television advertising buys. This is an indication that Facebook is targeting major TV brands to convince advertisers to make the switch to social advertising. The cost of the ads also leads to this assumption; after all, who can afford a multi-million dollar ad?
Will Facebook users – and advertisers – be receptive to the new video advertising platform? Or will they simply choose to scroll past the highly-anticipated, very expensive silent video ads without ever interacting? Will Facebook eventually un-mute the sound for these ads? Many are hoping the novelty of the video ad platform will soon wear off, and the price to advertise on the world’s most popular social network will be affordable for businesses great and small.
For more information on video marketing and social media, contact the experts at In Focus Studios. With locations in the Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill area as well as Annapolis and Baltimore, we happily serve all of North Carolina, Maryland, and Washington, D.C.
