[LINK] Facebook trialling autoplay video adverts

[Jan Whitaker]

  Facebook Tests Auto-Play Videos For Newsfeed On Mobile
Reuters  |  By Alexei Oreskovic Posted: 09/12/2013 5:07 pm EDT

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/13/facebook-videos_n_3916427.html

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Facebook Inc is testing videos that play 
automatically on mobile versions of its service, setting the stage to 
turn the 1.15 billion-member social network into an attractive venue 
for lucrative, television-like video ads.

The videos will be silent when they appear in a Facebook user's 
newsfeed, but expand and play the audio when clicked, the company 
said in a post on its official blog on Thursday.

Only videos posted to Facebook by individual users, celebrities or 
musicians will have the auto-play function during the test, Facebook 
said. But it noted that it would "explore how to bring this to 
marketers in the future."

The test, which involves a small group of U.S. users, is likely to 
ratchet up expectations for Facebook video ads. According to several 
media reports in recent months, Facebook is planning to charge brand 
marketers $1 million to $2.4 million to show 15-second auto-play 
video ads on its social network.
[snip]

Auto-play videos will work on Facebook's mobile apps for smartphones 
running Google Inc's Android software and Apple Inc's iOS software.

In internal tests so far, the auto-play ads did not seem to 
significantly reduce battery life, Zhou said. The videos stop playing 
once a user scrolls past them in the newsfeed, she noted, and users 
have the option of switching off the auto-play feature.

Auto-play will work only with videos that users upload directly to 
Facebook. Videos from external websites such as YouTube will not work 
with the auto-play feature in the test.

Facebook does not expect the auto-play videos to have a big impact on 
smartphone users' wireless data usage and monthly phone bills, Zhou said.
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Seriously? What does Zhou measure as 'big'?


Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
jwhit at janwhitaker.com

Sooner or later, I hate to break it to you, you're gonna die, so how 
do you fill in the space between here and there? It's yours. Seize your space.
~Margaret Atwood, writer

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