Facebook is lifting ban on pre-roll ads this year

SOCIAL media giant Facebook has revealed plans to test out the showing of short advertisements before videos on the platform’s new “Watch” section.

Introduced in August, the “Watch” tab features personalized recommendations of both live and recorded shows. Users can also discover video through different categories such as “Most Talked About”, “What’s Making People Laugh” and “Shows Your Friends Are Watching”.

“While pre-roll ads don’t work well in News Feed, we think they will work well in Watch, because it’s a place where people visit and come back to with the intention to watch videos,” said product manager director Maria Angelidou-Smith and product manager Abhishek Bapna in a blog post.

Though pre-roll ads are a popular feature in online videos, and a format in which advertisers are typically most comfortable with, Facebook has long opted for ‘ad breaks’ during videos instead.

But beginning this year, users will begin to see pre-rolled advertisements, lasting up to six seconds, on videos in Facebook’s ‘Watch’ hub.

As well as this introduction, Facebook has also announced the update of its news feed content ranking system. The update seeks to help surface the videos people are proactively seeking out and coming back to on the social media platform.

“With this update, we will show more videos in News Feed that people seek out or return to watch from the same publisher or creator week after week,” Bapna and Angelidou-Smith said.

“Over time, we expect more repeat viewing and engagement to happen in places like Watch.”

With online video being a significantly profitable component of digital marketing, it is no surprise the social media giant is updating its video-oriented content to gain revenue.

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