You may have noticed a little too many videos on your newsfeed lately, even from pages that you hardly visit. Facebook was even recommending videos from various pages to the users and now it has become clear that what was the reason behind it. At current, visual content is the most engaging of them all and when we hear the word “Videos” we automatically turn to “Youtube”. Facebook wanted to change that.
They were aggressively pushing the video content for quite some time now, and even introduced a very controversial way of counting views. Facebook counted even a 3-sec engagement as a view despite the fact that the video starts to play automatically. So the number on the papers was going high, but it was far from the actual reality. Some of the “Experts” were even predicting that in the near future, the company will come equal to the “Youtube”.
It doesn’t matter how many views you got on your videos because there was little to no direct earnings from the videos. Many big publishers such as BuzzFeed complained to Facebook that they are earning a minimal amount from the video content. So as we know that Facebook actively looks onto matters and takes every “Genuine concern” into account, it reacted the way nobody was expecting.
They are now going to play Video ads in the MIDDLE of the video. Yes, you read that right. The company will play ads after a user has watched at least 20 seconds of the video to ensure maximum engagement rate. They will also share a mammoth 55% of the profit with the publishers, the same as YouTube.
Now, this strategy of Facebook is beneficial in several aspects. Firstly, they will ensure the maximum engagement rate of the users, secondly, they will encourage the publisher to make long and engaging videos so that they can retain the users till 20 seconds, and last but not the least, they will ensure that advertisers get the maximum bang for their bucks.
So this strategy is not only beneficial for Facebook, but also for the users, advertisers, and publishers as well. A win-win situation for every party involved.
