Facebook testing mid-roll video ads

Facebook's quest for new channels for advertising was prompting it to test mid-roll video ads, Recode reports. This is crucial for the company as it might help it delay reaching maximum ad load, or the most ads it could show users without degrading their experience on the website or app.

According to CFO David Wehner, the problem could cause lower ad revenue growth rates by mid-2017.

The social network would require videos with mid-roll ads to run for at least 90 seconds in total, and a user had to watch a minimum of 20 seconds to be shown an ad. The company would limit ad length to 15 seconds, (as against 30 seconds for YouTube ads). Publishers would receive 55 per cent of the revenue generated by the ads, which was the same revenue-split that You Tube offered their video creators.

Some other implications of rolling out mid-roll video ads include:

Users could get frustrated by ads and while it was not clear whether or not users would be able to identify whether or not a video contained an ad, failure to do so could cause users to stop watching the video completely. For longer videos, YouTube marked ad placements on the video's timeline, which allowed users to see exactly when they would have to watch an ad.

Meanwhile, Facebook's new feature would allow users to stream live video from a desktop browser.

The feature, which is to roll out this week, would help broadcasters needed a stable camera setup for recording videos of themselves talking. It was just for Facebook Pages, though; and users would not be  able to broadcast from their browser if they only had an individual account.