Facebook is planning to introduce video ads and share revenue generated from them with content creators, according to a new report out of Recode and based on information from industry sources. The Menlo Park-based social media giant is reportedly looking to introduce mid-roll ads that appear to users who watch 20 or more seconds of a Facebook video that’s at least 90 seconds long. The short-term plan is to sell this type of advertising and share 55-percent of all generated revenue with publishers, meaning that Facebook is looking to mirror the business model utilized by the Google-owned YouTube, the leading video advertising company in the world. There’s currently no word on when Facebook will debut this type of video advertising, but sources claim the new ad system is right around the corner.
Facebook previously already experimented with showing mid-roll ads in its Live videos, but the firm has yet to make a serious push to monetize its growing video platform. Finding a successful way to monetize content is a crucial step in the company’s long-term strategy to develop a massive video service seeing how a platform of that kind of magnitude lives and dies by its content creators who aren’t likely to support it if they can’t reliably make a profit from their creative efforts. Recent reports suggest the Menlo Park-based social media giant is currently in talks about producing its own shows, but these negotiations are only aimed at kickstarting the company’s video platform which is envisioned as being driven by independent content creators.
Facebook’s efforts to grow its video service have so far been met with skepticism from the industry seeing how the firm was only talking about the technical aspects of the platform and seemingly didn’t pay much attention to monetization. However, this report certainly suggests that Facebook is not only looking to provide an alternative to YouTube but is also aiming to deliver a sustainable ecosystem that publishers will want to be a part of. It remains to be seen whether the company will manage to achieve that goal, but between this report and Facebook’s Live Video push, it’s clear that the firm is still adamant at positioning itself as one of the leading online video platforms.