Facebook Bringing Video Ads to Your News Feed

Facebook is planning some big changes for its fairly tame advertising format, according to Ad Age. Right now, many ads are static images and a little text by your newsfeed. By Q2 of next year, you’ll be seeing video ads popping up. The plan is to make video ad spots available to advertisers in the computer and mobile app versions of Facebook. The video format is meant to attract TV advertisers.
 

Facebook's Offices. Facebook may be planning video ads for its newsfeed. Image credit: Olivier Garamfalvi / Facebook

It looks as though the new video ads will play automatically, which is bound to annoy more than a few Facebook users. On the up side, Facebook is expected to limit videos to 15 seconds, which is pretty short compared to video ads on other websites. Video ads could appear in a news feed and expand when playing. Facebook is touting the variety of devices that people use throughout the day as a way to reach them multiple times: if you use Facebook on a PC, tablet, and phone, you might be treated to the same ad three times.

It will be interesting to see how users respond to video ads. At some point, too much advertising could make using Facebook too much of a hassle. Will video ads push Facebook’s advertising across that threshold? I don’t think it will – not at 15 second spots, at any rate – but it’s easy to start letting advertisers offer longer spots. In fact, I think it would be hard to say no to large advertisers who want more for their money. Would video ads make you leave Facebook? What would?