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Facebook To Introduce Video Ads

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the just-what-everyone-wanted dept.

another random user writes "Facebook is reportedly introducing video advertisements to News Feeds this summer. Reports in the Financial Times (registration required) say that the clips will last for around 15 seconds, and the first one users see each day will play automatically. The first video will apparently play without audio, and restart if the account holder chooses to activate sound. Facebook is yet to officially confirm the move, but the report claims that the social network will gradually introduce video advertising to minimize user disruption. The company's most lucrative marketing partners, including American Express, Coca Cola, Ford, Diageo and Nestle, are expected to be the first brands to make use of the feature. Facebook is said to have implemented the strategy in a bid to take a slice out of TV ad revenue by undercutting the sector."

16 of 180 comments (clear)

  1. that is a massive rip-off of my data allotment by swschrad · · Score: 5, Insightful

    and is likely to result in my pulling the plug. screw 'em.

    --
    if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
    1. Re:that is a massive rip-off of my data allotment by i+kan+reed · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Anyone who sat through previous Facebook abuse will sit through this. They have a monopoly on your friends. That's a hell of a thing to overcome. I deal with it by only ever talking to the friends I'm quite close to and leaving everyone else to themselves in the modern social networking era.

    2. Re:that is a massive rip-off of my data allotment by jythie · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I would wager the various adblocking tools will be updated to handle these new Facebook ads pretty quickly. You would think that by now marketers would have learned that people will generally let ads slide as long as they are unobtrusive, but these 'HEY LOOK AT ME!' ones always end up with people either avoiding the site or installing blocking software. These ads just don't work.

      I guess we are seeing yet another new generation of marketers learning old lessons, or old marketers who have rising through the ranks and not learned a think for the last 20 years.

    3. Re:that is a massive rip-off of my data allotment by CRCulver · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Yeah, people used to say the same thing about MySpace.

      MySpace only had a small portion of a typical person's friends: younger people, more computer-savvy compared to the general population. With everyone else you stayed in touch by e-mail or occasional phone calls.

      Facebook, however, is now utterly entrenched in Western society. Everyone a person keeps in touch with is likely to be on it: friends from all walks of life, relatives both close and distant, professional colleagues. And many of those friends seem to have forgotten about e-mail and expect you to contact them via FB message.

      Leaving FB is a lot harder to do than moving on from Myspace or Friendster was years ago. I know for a fact that I'd lose contact entirely with many people if I gave up my FB account.

    4. Re:that is a massive rip-off of my data allotment by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

      That says something about the value of your friends if they are only willing to use a crappy medium to talk to you. Would you talk to a guy who only talked to you through a bullhorn?

    5. Re:that is a massive rip-off of my data allotment by Luckyo · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Sounds like someone who's a facebook addict.

      As someone who doesn't have a facebook account, I can tell you that you're wrong, and you'll likely realise just how wrong you are in judging the importance of facebook when you actually leave it and see that all your friends, acquaintances, people you need to contact... exist here in real life and have email accounts and phone numbers.

    6. Re:that is a massive rip-off of my data allotment by houghi · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Friends don't let friends use Facebook.

      --
      Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
    7. Re:that is a massive rip-off of my data allotment by admdrew · · Score: 4, Insightful

      For some it's really not that easy. Paul Miller's article about leaving the internet for a full year is pretty interesting, and touches on some important aspects of social networking. Facebook enables casual long distance relationships that are often not realistic for many of us. I rarely talk to my best friend from high school on the phone or via text, but we do interact via Facebook pretty frequently. Without that social network link, we would've fallen out of touch over the years - with it, we're able to stay relatively up to date with minimal effort.

      Now, do my friends deserve *more* than minimal effort? Of course. But the reality of leaving one's hometown (or college town or longtime employer) makes it unlikely that I'm going to see/call/write those friends of mine on a regular enough basis to keep close connections going, something Facebook has made possible for me.

      For those of us with (even mildly) busy lives who have met many wonderful people over the years, social networking has been terribly useful.

      --
      LegendMUD
    8. Re:that is a massive rip-off of my data allotment by dragon-file · · Score: 3, Insightful

      screw 'em.

      See you say that, but I don't believe you. Maybe because every time facebook does something like this people say screw them... and go right back to using them in a month.

      I haven't used facebook in over 5 years and nothing they are doing is making me regret my decision.

      --
      Whenever a player quits EVE to go play WoW, the Average IQ of both games increase.
    9. Re:that is a massive rip-off of my data allotment by CRCulver · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Sounds like someone who's a facebook addict.

      I don't care much for FB and rarely post there. I'd be very happy to leave if I knew my friends and family would follow to other means of communication.

      As someone who doesn't have a facebook account, I can tell you that you're wrong, and you'll likely realise just how wrong you are in judging the importance of facebook when you actually leave it and see that all your friends, acquaintances, people you need to contact... exist here in real life and have email accounts and phone numbers.

      Nope, I've already tried moving back to e-mail. The result is that people rarely respond, because they can't be arsed to log in to e.g. GMail often, whereas if one sends them a message via FB, they perk up instantly. Consequently, I've kept my FB account even if I use it increasingly less.

      A friend of mine who left FB entirely last year, with whom I still keep in touch because we both accept e-mail, has bemoaned instantly losing touch with most of his acquaintances. And then mutual friends of ours often ask where he is nowadays, oblivious that he'd like very much to stay in touch with them. He has sent them e-mails, but they just can't focus on e-mail communication.

    10. Re:that is a massive rip-off of my data allotment by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I believe that the illusion of friendship is what keeps a lot of people hooked on Facebook. Without it, people are left to the real world where most of the people they are "friends" with on Facebook are not worth the bother of contacting specifically, if the thought of these people ever occurs at all. That, and the knowledge that the feeling is broadly mutual.

    11. Re:that is a massive rip-off of my data allotment by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      A friend of mine who left FB entirely last year, with whom I still keep in touch because we both accept e-mail, has bemoaned instantly losing touch with most of his acquaintances. And then mutual friends of ours often ask where he is nowadays

      If friend's can't be bothered to respond to your emails or telephone, then perhaps they are not your friends at all.

  2. A whole lotta "don't care" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Let's go to a site that requires registration to read an article about a site I don't use that's going to annoy its users attempting to take market share from a medium I watch less and less.

  3. Teevee by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Facebook is said to have implemented the strategy in a bid to take a slice out of TV ad revenue by undercutting the sector."

    More like mimicking TV and the number one thing about it that made the internet seem like a potentially worthwhile alternative.

  4. Here we go... by SeaFox · · Score: 3, Insightful

    The new, more obtrusive, more bandwidth hogging ads are coming.
    Next will be the increase in frequency and length of ads.
    Then the exodus will start.
    Then there will probably be a site-wide remake or relaunch to try and get people interested.
    By then a new social networking site will be getting hype and half their user will already have an account on it as well.
    Then they stop using their Facebook account and start referring people to the other site who contact them on FB.
    Then Facebook becomes another ghost ship of abandoned profiles like MySpace.

  5. Re:exactly why AdBlock was created by DocSavage64109 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I don't know about androids, but there's no adblock for an iphone.