Facebook starting to put ads in the middle of videos

PanARMENIAN.Net - On Thursday, February 23 Facebook announced that it will start putting ads in the middle of publisher’s videos, kind of like TV commercials. These “mid-roll” ads were known to be coming but now Facebook says they’re officially live, though just as a “test,” Recode says.

This is big news for publishers, many of which have trouble making money off videos they share to Facebook, Recode says. Facebook lets publishers make money from branded content, or videos they create for marketers, but CEO Mark Zuckerberg has always been opposed to pre-roll ads, which are standard in the industry.

So publishers were clamoring for a way to get paid for all the video they share to Facebook, and the company thinks mid-roll ads might do the trick.

Facebook is testing the new ads with a “small group” of U.S. publishers, and will split ad revenue with them — 55 percent to the publisher and 45 percent to Facebook. The ads can’t run until a video has been rolling for at least 20 seconds, and ads must be at least two minutes apart, Facebook says.

Facebook was already running this mid-roll ads on some live videos, and said Thursday that those efforts are expanding. Now any U.S. publisher with 2,000 or more followers that has also “reached 300 or more concurrent viewers in a recent live video” will be eligible to insert video ads into their livestreams. Facebook offers to same ad split for mid-rolls in live videos, 55 percent to the publisher and 45 percent to Facebook.

The criteria for live video ads is slightly different. Publishers need to be live for at least four minutes before they can take an ad break, and the stream must have at least 300 concurrent viewers. Each ad will last 20 seconds.