The latest buzz on the global marketing streets is that Facebook has announced that from July this year they will be launching video advertisements which will appear in users newsfeeds.
With pressure on the company to increase revenues this really is no surprise, but will it be annoying enough for users to ‘dislike’ and move away from the social network … probably not.
The plan is that the newsfeed video adverts play automatically, but without any sound. If the user chooses to listen then the advert will start from the beginning.
It will be interesting to see how Facebook users react. On the one hand it could be seen as a good thing and reinforce messages seen and heard across other media such as television, on the other hand it could be really irritating be seen as more unwanted junk clogging up a perfectly good news feed. It could even fall foul of the ‘banner blindness’ scenario where users just don’t even acknowledge that an advert is in front of them.
As a business it sounds like a great opportunity, especially if video is already part of your content strategy. It is reported that the charge to display a video advert will be in the ‘low $20s’ per thousand video views, which makes it another affordable channel at your disposal to share content, or it could even be a cost effective alternative to existing broadcast marketing activities.