Facebook Gives Advertisers New Video Ad Options

The company will offer the same revenue split as YouTube – 55 percent for the video creator and 45 percent for Facebook. By introducing this step, Facebook wants attract more polished content and more ads.

This feature is known as suggested videos that include advertisements related to professional content from well known advertising companies as well as media companies. In its first quarter report, Facebook said it now records four billion video views every day, up from three billion in the previous quarter.

Basically, any video uploaded to YouTube can be displayed as an ad before, during and after another video.

By all accounts this move by Facebook spells trouble for Google and its lucrative YouTube ad business. You may see videos playing automatically when scrolling through your News Feed, but you won’t start seeing annoying pre-roll adverts when browsing.

As an incentive to get video creators to publish more video directly to Facebook, the company will be implementing revenue sharing in a way that pits the social network in direct competition with YouTube.

Finding a way to accurately measure ads on its platform is also one of Facebook’s concerns. Until now, it has only slotted video ads into FB user’s news feeds. So, Facebook revealed a new alogrithm change on Monday, one that will be able to allow the company to get the best videos in front of its users at all times, even if that user takes no actions such as liking, sharing or commenting.

Next, switch the “Auto-Play Videos” settings to “off”.

YouTube has a system called Content ID to help companies identify when their copyrighted content is being used in user-uploaded videos, and then choose to either leave those videos alone, block them, or leave them up but make money from the advertising around them. However, that may not be the most accurate representation of the kinds of videos a person wants to be served. And its News Feed is changing to serve videos based on those interactions, with a “Suggested Videos” feed that places videos Facebook thinks a user will prefer higher up.

The social network is starting to run ads between videos for a small group of publishers including Fox Sports, the National Basteball Association and amusing or Die.