The Facebook team seems to be engaged into a lot of things, as the social network has continually remained in the news for different reasons. More recently, a lot of that attention has been due to Instagram, while others have been the result of adding new features to their website.
Now according to the latest news, it has been learnt that Facebook may launch auto play video ads on its news feed as early as April of next year. This news has been confirmed by several TV ad executives, who believe that Mark Zuckerberg and company have plans to first roll out these auto play video ads on their website and then eventually bring it to their mobile platforms as well.
These video ads will most probably play for 15 seconds, may include an auto audio function and could be for a specifically targeted user group only. It is also expected that the website version of these auto play video ads would expand out of the news feed into the right and left columns in order to grasp the attention of the Facebook user.
The aim of Facebook to introduce these automatically played video ads is to lure advertisers that usually purchases TV ads. Reports also revealed that Facebook is also working to find a way which can ensure the auto play video ads would also grasp users’ attention on its mobile app.
Although Facebook already has video ads on its sidebars, none of these ads have auto play or expand out into the columns. Another driving force behind the decision to feature auto play ads is the fact that advertisers have recently started using this feature. A few ad executives fear that this type of advertisement can receive severe criticism from Facebook users, with one source saying, “There could be serious outrage”.