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Move over YouTube? Facebook steps up pressure on YouTube by sharing ad revenue with video creators

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By Natalie Mortimer, N/A

July 2, 2015 | 3 min read

Facebook is ramping up efforts to snare ad budgets from YouTube by revealing it will share ad revenue with video creators using its site.

The move comes as Facebook looks to capitalise on the four hundred billion videos viewed each day and attract more quality content.

From the autumn video creators such as Funny or Die and NBA will be offered revenue spilt from ads sold alongside their content, in a similar model used by YouTube.

However, the revenue share will not apply to all videos seen in Facebook’s News Feed; a new feature called Suggested Videos will be rolled out that will be populated exclusively with video content.

Gareth Capon, chief executive at real-time video platform Grabyo, said the move signals the next stage of video monetisation on social platforms.

"Facebook has chosen a model more like YouTube than Twitter, and more like TV advertising with ads between content rather pre-roll,” he said. “The Suggested Videos feature looks like it will be a more engaged video experience with audio on."

Facebook can provide brands with desired content as well as the desired demographic, continued Capon: “Facebook knows a lot about its users, both from opt-in engagement data such as ‘likes, comments and shares’ in addition to how they spend their time and attention within the newsfeed. The picture of user behaviour is further enhanced by data coming from millions of mobile apps that use Facebook Open Graph for authentication and login. As such Facebook can use this data to present videos to its users that are both relevant and in context - which means users are much more likely to watch them."

Facebook has continued to prioritise video content in recent months, having made tweaks to its algorithm to push through more video and launched autoplay in its News Feed to attract eyeballs.

The social network is fast becoming a more realistic alternative to YouTube for advertisers to spend the bulk of their video advertising budgets. Video views on Facebook are tipped to surpass two trillion this year, which is two thirds of YouTube’s forecasted total for the same period, according to a recent report.

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