14 DAY TRIAL // It's been pretty clear for a while now that Facebook has big plans for its video business, but it's just now that it was revealed that it plans to be a type of YouTube by introducing ads in the middle of the videos playing on its platform.
Back in the day, when Facebook went on the stock market, investors started pressuring the company to find a way to monetize the social network. One of their main concerns was how the company was going to make money from its mobile app. Well, years later, it's clear that there are no issues about how Facebook will make its money as it is inventing new ways to do this, even at the cost of annoying users to no end.
YouTube, for instance, will display ads at the beginning of a video. Then, even if your experience is delayed a bit, it won't be completely ruined. Well, Recode reports that Facebook's plans involve mid-video ads lasting 20 seconds. Furthermore, the ads won't be able to run until the video has been playing for at least 20 seconds and they have to be spaced two minutes apart.
Ads go live, too
Not even live videos will be spared. According to the aforementioned publication, if a publisher has at least 2,000 followers and hit 300 concurrent live viewers in a recent live video, ads will be available to them too. There are some limitations, however, as the broadcast needs to run for at least four minutes and have those 300 viewers mentioned above.
Publishers are said to get 55% of the proceeds, with Facebook getting its hands on the rest.
In recent weeks, it was revealed that Facebook is making another push for TV space. The company launched an app for set-top boxes allowing people to check out Facebook videos on their big screens. It was expected that they'd find a way to monetize this new area as well, and it seems that through these mid-video ads, they'll be doing just that and more.