Facebook Testing Mid-Roll Ads That Play in Middle of Videos

Last month Facebook announced—or perhaps we should say warned—users that it was considering displaying ads in the middle of videos.

Well, it’s happening now.

As a way to slam ads in the faces of those who use ad-blockers, Facebook’s new mid-roll ads have entered the testing phase this week. (You don’t want to see ads everywhere? Here, have some more ads!)

Facebook says it plans to give publishers 55% of revenue from the ads, which is what YouTube offers. Users watch well over 100 million hours of video content per day on Facebook, so that’s a sizeable opportunity for both Mark Zuckerberg’s company and the publishers.

One thing that may have to change is how Facebook categorizes a “video view.” Currently, it only takes three seconds for Facebook to consider a video viewed. If ads aren’t popping up until the middle of a video, Facebook’s metrics might look a little wonky between views and ad views.

https://borndigital.com/2016/12/15/facebook-messenger-adds-native-camera