The video ads Facebook originally planned to launch this month or in July are now on hold until at least mid-October, Ad Age reported, with sources telling the magazine more development is needed on new features the social network plains to release simultaneously with its video ads.
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Wall Street was kind to Facebook Thursday, as AP reported that analysts Brian Pitz of Jefferies and Daniel Salmon of BMO Capital Markets upgraded their ratings on the social network’s stock.
It’s not quite the Facebook video ads that have been the subject of rumors, but social rich media advertising platform Moontoast and user-generated-video platform VideoGenie announced Thursday that they have teamed up to integrate VideoGenie’s capabilities for capturing and managing user-generated video with Moontoast’s ad units.
While Facebook users may see the video ads the social network is reportedly working on as a distraction, the company sees them as a potential $4 million-per-day opportunity, according to a report in Ad Age.
Facebook rejiggered the process of creating ads on its power editor advertising platform, giving page administrators greater flexibility in choosing what types of ads they want to create, rather than starting out by specifying what they were trying to promote.
It turns out that our colleague Brittany Darwell of sister blog Inside Facebook was spot-on last month when she predicted that the next component of Facebook to be overhauled would be its news feed, as the social network emailed invites to the press for an event at its headquarters in Menlo Park. Calif., saying, “Come see a new look for news feed.”
As Facebook is rumored to be working on 15-second video ads that would start automatically (it’s still unclear whether audio will accompany these ads), user response has been overwhelmingly negative. But one video-animation firm thinks that there’s a way that the social network can serve video ads on mobile devices without disrupting the user experience. Derek Merdinyan, founder of Video Igniter, thinks that a photo-based ad unit where users turn the phone landscape-style to view a video could be a way for Facebook to make video ads work somewhat peacefully.
In December, Ad Age reported that Facebook was working on 15-second video ads that would automatically play in the news feed, potentially with audio. User backlash to this development was harsh, but Facebook is still tweaking the potential product. Chief Marketing Officer David Fischer said earlier this week at the Future of Media Conference at Stanford University that if the company were to roll out auto-play video ads, there’s a way that it could be done without greatly hurting the user experience.
As more users and brands have joined Facebook, the ways that companies market to fans (and potential fans) have changed greatly. At first, marketers were obsessed with getting likes, and then the focus was on engagement. What’s next? Mike Onghai, founder of social marketing platform AppAddictive, feels that companies will start paying more attention to their current fans in an effort to turn likes into sales.
On Tuesday, a report detailed that Facebook is planning to implement 15-second video advertisements that automatically play — an effort to grab television ad dollars. The reaction around the Internet was swift and negative, criticizing the social network for being too invasive by making the ads play instantly, forcing users to push pause or stop. But how effective are video ads in the first place?
