Here is how Facebook’s new video ads will look in your timeline

BY Kelly Hodgkins

Published 18 Dec 2013

facebook-video-ads

Facebook is rolling out video ads that’ll hit your timeline, like it or not. To help businesses prepare for this marketing opportunity, the social network has published a blog post that details how the video ads will work and how they will appear in a user’s timeline.

As was rumored by the Wall Street Journal, Facebook has been working with Summit Entertainment and Mindshare to develop a series of video ads for the upcoming film, Divergent.

These new ads will debut in the mobile and desktop timelines for some Facebook users in the coming weeks. Here is how the ads will work:

  • Rather than having to click or tap on the content, videos will begin to play as they appear on screen — without sound — similar to how they behave when shared by friends now. If you don’t want to watch the video, you can simply scroll past it.
  • If the video is clicked or tapped and played in full screen, the sound for that video will play as well
  • At the end of the video, a carousel featuring two additional videos will appear, making it easy to discover more content from the same marketer
  • On mobile devices, all videos that begin playing as they appear on the screen will have been downloaded in advance when the device was connected to WiFi — meaning this content will not consume data plans, even if you’re not connected to WiFi at the time of playback

The ads won’t be blasted at users en masse, instead they will be targeted to “ensure the best experience for people and marketers.” We can get a taste of what the ads will look like in the video on Facebook’s blog post. It’s filmed on an iPhone, but you get the idea.

What do you think of these ads? Are they too intrusive or will you just ignore them like you ignore the other drivel that lands in your timeline?