Facebook Starts to Stick Ads in the Middle of Videos

Facebook has had a lot of success with monetizing their platform with advertisements. But these advertisements have also helped businesses of all sizes get recognition in an increasingly digital world. That’s partially why a lot of young start-up companies have had so much success — they’ve had successful advertising campaigns on Facebook and Instagram that reached a lot of users.

Videos are a powerful tool for businesses to utilize, not only for advertising purposes, but in order to get their content to their followers and customers. According to Facebook, more people are now watching videos, especially on mobile devices. In 2016, Facebook users watched more than 100 hours of video per day on Facebook, and video-watching on Instagram increased by more than 40%.

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Most videos that come up in your Facebook feed will be trustworthy in terms of security, but they might contain more ads than before. Recently, Facebook announced that more video publishers will now be able to show ad breaks mid-video. Previously, this option was only available to a select group of publishers. Video publishers will get slightly more than half of the money from advertisements, which will help publishers to more successfully monetize their content.

How the Ads Work
After 20 seconds of a video, an ad can play. Each ad must be at least two minutes apart. This is more similar to how advertising works on YouTube, except that ads on Facebook videos will not show before a video starts. These ads can be featured on pre-recorded video and live video, although live video must be live for at least four minutes before an ad can play.

This mid-video advertising option also resembles TV commercials. This is a good move for Facebook and businesses alike. If the future of TV is now online (through streaming services), then this should help advertisers to have their content seen.

The Future of Video on Facebook
It’s no secret that Facebook is trying to more closely mimic YouTube. But they’re also trying to go beyond that, by incorporating many new features to make Facebook your one-stop-shop on the Web. Over the years, they’ve added a separate messaging service, several of Snapchat’s features, video-calling, Instant Articles, live videos, and beyond. More recently, Facebook hired an MTV executive to help them make their own Facebook original TV shows. If this becomes successful, Facebook could be the streaming service of the future. Why would you want to go to another website when you can do everything on one site? That’s how Facebook feels, at least — and they believe that their users feel the same.