Facebook to integrate video ads into newsfeed

After months of speculation, Facebook is now primed to launch video advertising in its newsfeed according to a report today in the Financial Times.

The move will likely try and shift some of the advertising spend weighted heavily towards television into the digital space, which has traditionally cost far less.

Though still relatively small when compared with the $64.5 billion spend for TV ads in the US, digital video advertising is expanding and according to eMarketer, is expected to surpass revenue of $4.1 billion in the US this year, a 41.4% year on year increase.

The new video ads will appear in users’ newsfeeds, where video will play automatically but without sound, unless users opt to activate audio.

However, there are concerns that this will disrupt the Facebook user experience, according to Brian Wieser, an analyst at Pivotal Research.

Wieser said that video ads delivered into Facebook’s newsfeed will be more ‘intrusive’ than any other ads, and that autoplay would be generally disliked.

Wieser also explained that Facebook is likely to be conducting tests to assess the cost of turning people away before any launch date.

The ads – which will be charged in the “low $20s” per thousand video views – will be limited to a 15 second maximum play time, and individual users will see video content from just one advertiser per day to give more ‘powerful exposure’ for brands, according to the Financial Times.