With video consumption on Facebook now topping 100 million hours a day, the social media giant has brought video advertising capability to its two-year-old Audience Network platform, an aggregation of third-party apps and sites.
In a post on its Facebook for Business blog, Facebook said that it can maximize the return for advertisers seeking more brand awareness via video, with Facebook Audience Network (FAN) generating 10% more incremental reach than using only its mobile News Feed product.
In-stream video ads will now appear as pre-roll, mid-roll or post-roll, with Facebook enlisting USA Today Sports Media Group as its trial partner.
The social media giant is also adding in-article video ads, beginning with its Instant Articles platform. These ads will appear between paragraphs, playing automatically when at least half of the pixels are viewable (users must opt-in for sound, however). The Daily Mail is its trial partner on the initiative.
Introduced in 2014, FAN enables advertisers to expand their reach beyond Facebook and Instagram. Facebook claimed in January that FAN has a US$1 billion revenue run rate, meaning that if it was able to sustain the revenue generated in a specific time over a 12-month period, it would equal $1 billion.
Facebook doesn’t disclose how much of the FAN revenue it shares with advertisers, saying only that “the bulk” of revenues are diverted to its publisher partners. The company claimed that the number of apps on FAN increased by 10% year-over-year, with apps running on the platform accounting for 6% of all time spent in mobile apps.
While the FAN has traditionally focused on direct response advertising, Facebook claims that the addition of video optimizes results for marketers focused on brand awareness and recall.
