Facebook tries video on Newsfeed as doubts grow about just how annoying ads might be
Facebook, keen to gets its $1m-plus ads video ads up and running, yesterday said it is testing video in newsfeeds with a small number of users. These are not ads at the moment. A typical trial is the one shown here of someone ski-ing.
How video might look on Facebook
In a blog post on its newsroom page, Facebook said:"Today we’re starting to test an easier way to watch videos on Facebook. Now when you see a video in News Feed, it comes to life and starts playing.
"Videos initially play silently, and if you want you can tap to play with sound in full screen. Scroll past if you don’t want to watch."
The Wall Street Journal, claimed, "Newsfeed video is coming, whether Facebook users want it or not. Advertisers can’t wait to get their hands on it, and had been hoping to release some by October.
"Some had expected to deploy ads over the summer but Facebook has been cautious, delaying the rollout several times in recent months to tweak the experience."
It now looks as if the first adverts won't be trialled until after Thanksgiving in November, start of the end-of-the-year sales binge.
The WSJ writer has a take on the irritation factor likely in video ads: "Auto-play videos could end up a giant distracting nuisance to people scrolling through newsfeeds if the company doesn’t get it right.
"The placement and size of videos, how often they show in a feed, whether they stack (will we ever see more than one playing on a screen at a time — "please no) — all of this will determine whether users can stomach the change.
"That said, time and again Facebook users have resisted a change only to shrug about it months later or wonder how they every lived without it."