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Fearful of Reader Reaction, Facebook Delays Video Ads
AlistairCharlton writes "Facebook is continuing with plans to launch news feed video adverts, but has faced setbacks with CEO Mark Zuckerberg twice delaying the project amid fears of tainting the user experience. Reports claim Facebook will soon add 15-second video adverts to users' news feeds in a bid to lure big spenders away from traditional television ads and onto the social network." For some reason, video ads bother me little on sites like YouTube (where the content is visual, sound isn't a big surprise, and the ads are usually quickly interruptable), but otherwise they make me cringe and wish for a nuclear-enabled ad blocker.
Except for strange coded messages from our Facebook overlords?
I'm going to be the someone smugly pointing out that they don't use Facebook. But seriously, I can't imagine the payoff of using the site is worth the thousands things they do to track you.
Adblockers are your friend. Nothing gets blocked faster than autoplay video ads.
Pity your poor, humble narrator, my brothers. What a horrorshow I am now forced to viddy with my glassies!
The Moore-Murphy Law: The number of things that will go wrong will double every 2 years.
...CEO Mark Zuckerberg twice delaying the project amid fears of tainting the user experience.
Too late for that, Zucky. Waaaaaay too late. If it weren't for extensions like F.B. Purity, my wall would be nothing but you fuckers peddling likes to shit my friends like and 'suggesting' friends for me. It's so far out of hand already, it's bananas! God damn I can't wait for Facebook to be dethroned.
FB doesn't make a dime off of people posting what they had for breakfast. They make money off of ads.
For my own part, it's allowed me to stay in touch with people from the various chapters of my life. That's what it is to most people. But that doesn't make FB any money.
FB's iOS app is pretty much useless because of the intrusive ads. They usually fill up the entire screen and I believe some of the postings from my friends are not being displayed in favor of ads in the same way that the postings from friends you rarely interact with aren't displayed in favor of the ones you interact with daily.
FB must know that more intrusive ads will piss people off. But they still need to make money. Rock? Meet hard place.
Pushing unwanted content at users only has one result.
Zuckerberg isn't a fucking idiot
"Fearful of customer reaction, WalMart has delayed their new 'mandatory anal probe at the door' policy..."
Shucks ... there goes my career change plans
Best joke I've heard all week. There's probably a technical hold-up. Nothing has prevented Facebook from doing anything before, except maybe the SEC.
As long as they keep using Facebook it doesn't matter how much they hate the ads or how loudly they complain.
The first time I see a Facebook video ad is the last time I use Facebook.
TSA employee?
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
FB is about scrolling through short messages, not about pausing and watching stupid-moron videoclip of zero interesting content.
Facebook is already using video ads in certain instances. I know, in some Facebook games, you can watch a video ad to receive extra lives or such. The obvious difference is that there is a trade. The user is receiving something in exchange for, at least, letting the video play. Doesn't stop them for switching tabs until the ad is over.
My ISP has a cap on download. Video ads eat up bandwidth and nudges my usage towards that monthly cap. The day that FB launches video ads, I will no longer patronize FB because it is costing ME $$$, not to mention intruding my limited personal time on the internet.
Eternity: will that be smoking, or non-smoking? I Corinthians 6:9-10
(leaving aside the fact that nobody really cares)
FB is resorting to increasingly intrusive strategies to maintain ad-revenue and that great MBAmerican idea that companies must continue to grow or face heat death ("too infinity and beyond!"), and at some point it will start to drive away users, at which point it will be too late to stop the bleeding no matter what they try, and soon after all that will be left is a handful of grandmothers who didn't get the memo and aimless hordes of rabid beliebers, because that's who FB is really designed for.
OK, maybe I should rename the subject to "My hope"
I look at Facebook twice a year, usually to turn off some annoying notification feature they recently added.
I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
get'Facedbook is already stomping the users (uh, the product) left and right, and the mass has been growling. forced video ads that burn up the mobile bandwidth will be the last straw, and get'Facedbook will go down hard if they put that crap into practice.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
Remember those losers on myspace with the flash autoplay music?
Is a tainted experience in itself..
I grudgingly reactivated my FB account a few months ago to stay in touch with family, but the minute I see the first video ad I am actually deleting my account. I HATE those. If I land on a page with a video ad, I immediately close the tab and find my content elsewhere. The exception I make to this is youtube because I'm THERE for video content.
Video ads have done a good job of luring me away from broadcast and cable television (except for premium, ad-free channels)
I have flashblock installed on all my browsers and am very happy with it.
What is the attraction of video ads for the user?
Aren't videos already click to play in most browsers, in that you have to do something to make them start? How is this supposed to work?
And if it does, how long before the browser makers respond by not allowing autoplay video?
-- "So they told me that using the download page to download something was not something they anticipated." - Bill Gates
This will serve as an announcement for when my co-workers are screwing off on facebook rather than doing their work. Maybe if they can't read facebook all day they'll also not find a constant stream of shit to chat about.
I like this video ad idea. Make it nice and loud, please. Full-screen and flashing.
Awesome.
When have they ever given a flying fuck about their customers' opinions on any stupid new thing they do? They aren't launching it because the income projections from it aren't high enough.
Video ads (with sound) are the most annoying part of the internet experience, edging out popovers. If they go to that... well, there's always google+. Or email. Remember email? Actually talking to your friends in your own words?
Alternately, is there a plugin that allows one to conveniently turn the browser's ability to play video on and off?
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Users on facebook get upset, launch petitions, and complain loudly, but they don't actually leave.
When I was a heavier facebook user, I did the same thing.
Oh sure we'd make noise and stuff, even not sign in for a few hours, but we'd be back.
Today I only go to facebook every few days to check in on friends who can't seem to use email.
And does it happen before or after they're hired?
Did it ever occur to any of these web advertising geniuses that we don't *all* have broadband all the time and that their cheery little video missives slow down the browser to the point where you turn it off?
And if we do have broadband, but we're getting it through a hotspot where we're charged through the nose for going over 2 Gigabyes a month, that just maybe we're going to start avoiding these expensive leech ad pages like the plague?
Seriously, if your advertising starts costing me money or time, you're shit out of luck. I not only won't buy from you, I'll never see your ad in the first place.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
TSA employee?
Yes, the Toilet Security Agency is always looking for people who are willing and able to probe peoples anal regions for fun
If they can stop ads on youtube, I'm sure facebook won't stand much a chance there either.
Ads are always annoying to the person subjected to them. But there are varying degrees of annoying. A banner is annoying if it's drawing your attention by flashing, but you shrug it off. A popup is annoying and you have to close it. And various others require you to click somewhere to close them or get rid of them, but they're just annoying.
It stops being annoying and it starts making people really angry if they have to sit and wait. And that's basically what you have to do when using video ads. You have to sit there and wait. Because if you COULD close it easily, it would fail to deliver its message. Think about it: Consider you only get to see 2-3 Seconds of a TV ad. Would you even know what product is being hawked?
So to make video ads efficient, you not only have to annoy the person seeing it, you have to BORE him. And bored people generally start to think. No, don't come around with "but FB users are too dumb to think", people DO think when they're bored. They are working out a scheme to get rid of their boredom. If they have to click to close something, you're doing something and hence it's not as annoying as sitting there and just waiting.
And every user can open a new window, open the search engine of his choice and enter "how the FUCK do I get rid of those damn ads on facebook".
And from this moment on, he does not only block the video ads, he is blocking ALL ads, hence not only not increasing FBs ad revenue but actually DEcreasing it.
And that's what Zuckerberg is afraid of.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
The next step will be video ads where
Note that the new XBox is fully equipped to do that.
Facebook will go the way of Myspace, albeit much more slowly. Society, in general, is going through a faze much like teenagers used to go through with phones. You know, back in the day, when they'd basically spend hours on the phone talking with friends, annoying everyone else in the house. That novelty wore off eventually, and those same teenagers shifted to only using the phone when they needed to. That's what's happening with Facebook.
I've noticed a marked downturn in usage among my friends in the last few years, with most rarely posting anything that's not actually important or interesting. It's a nice change from the days of Farmville spam and 20-questions posts. So on that front, I'm happy to see the changes made to Facebook, because I really do feel like it's a better site. Unfortunately for Facebook, since we're all using it less for daily habits and more for weekly photo uploads and status updates, they have to be making less money on us all.
Even more interesting is that when I look at who's connected to Facebook, I see probably 80% of my friends are using it through their phones, and only "checking in" when they get a new message or something. So unless Facebook starts forcing mobile ads onto phones that don't even have the app running in the foreground, I can't imagine these video ads ever really making a difference.
Finally, a reason to jailbreak my iOS devices. Facebook integration my arse...
I have never watched more than a few seconds of a video ad, just long enough to close the window. If I'm browsing news, and that news content is in the form of a video, I don't go there - because I assume it will have a 15-to-60 lead-in ad. The only possible result is to drive me away from your web page. Now in the case of Facebook, I have an account; but I only log in when they change their privacy options. So it really doesn't matter.
I really really really hate video ads.
I despise them.
And it's why FB is about to become a dodo - haven't even loaded it on my iPhone5.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
by Facebook.
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