Facebook Auto Play Video Ads For Advertisers Announced

Facebook announced today that it is testing a new video format for advertisers. The testing for advertisers comes after Facebook began testing a similar format for making videos more engaging on Facebook. The test that kicked off in September made videos easier to watch in the News Feed.

As soon as a viewer on a mobile app saw a video it would automatically start playing without sound. If the viewer wanted to hear the video, they could click it. Advertisers will now get to use a similar ad format for videos. Facebook says that this week a small number of members will see a video ad for the movie "Divergent."

Those that see the ad will note that it begins playing when they open their news feed without sound. The user will be able to scroll past the video if they don't want to see it. If they do want to see it, they can click it or tap it to play the video in full screen.

When in full screen mode, the video will play with sound. After the video ends, two additional videos will appear allowing the user to view more content from the same advertiser if they want. On mobile devices videos that begin playing as they appear on screen will have been downloaded while the user was connected to WiFi. This means the video ads won't use up data bandwidth. The last time we talked about video ads was in October when they were tipped to be delayed.

SOURCE: Facebook