Facebook set to finally launch auto-play video ads in news feeds

http://arstechnica.com/business/2013/12/report-facebook-set-to-finally-launch-auto-play-video-ads-in-news-feeds/

by shawndumas • 13 years ago

27 55 13 years ago

arstechnica.com

chris_wot2• 13 years ago

I think that when they do this, I will delete my Facebook account. Or at the very least, not log into it.

throwwit• 13 years ago

If anything things like this are a reason... http://www.fastcompany.com/3023263/work-smart/the-surprising...

Facebook has gotta start looking out for it's user's interests.

chris_wot2• 13 years ago

The only reason people use Facebook is because other people use Facebook. It's not even because of the technology. This could be done by someone else (it would take time to get to the same scale). If more people remove themselves from it, then it will eventually fail.

Nursie2• 13 years ago

$2 million per day to really annoy a whole load of people...

Advertisers get ever more desperate to reach audiences but we've seen before that this arms race ends with ads so intrusive that people start to block them routinely. It might drive people away from FB, or it might make ad blocking more mainstream. It'll be interesting to watch.

tokenizer2• 13 years ago

OR, people won't care, and you and I are the small minority who bother to block them or boycott said websites,

Nursie2• 13 years ago

I don't boycott facebook, and I don't think other people will either. But it will drive more to adblocking, I'm sure of it. Not everyone, sure, but more.

rfnslyr4• 13 years ago

For all those thinking that you can't delete your facebook because you will lose connections: Delete it and watch how much you don't care.

Get their emails/phone numbers, call them once in awhile, grab a coffee.

k-mcgrady3• 13 years ago

A simpler idea is to stop using your account but leave it active. Make it a glorified address book. Every now and then you can check in and accept friend requests if necessary. I know a few people who use it like this (not because they dislike Facebook but just because they spend very little time at a computer). It seems to work for them. They get the benefits without the constant ads and stream of info they don't care about. Of course if privacy is your concern this isn't a good suggestion but otherwise it's a happy medium.

bluecalm• 13 years ago

Exactly what I am doing. Gotta log in from time to time to check if they haven't changed the email given as contact to facebook one again though :)

JTon• 13 years ago

I both agree with and practice this approach. It works very well for me. The features I use exclusively are messages and events. It's the path of least resistance for many of friends outside my core circles to contact me.

nilkn• 13 years ago

Oddly enough, Facebook is finally starting to live up to its under-promising name: a digital yearbook that I occasionally thumb through when I'm curious about an old friend but otherwise let sit collecting dust.

Really exciting and controversial stuff doesn't happen much on Facebook anymore, at least not on my news feed. People are too concerned about maintaing their constructed image. My friends with babies use it as a family album. My friends trying to go into acting or modeling practically use it as an online professional portfolio. A lot of my coworkers are connected on Facebook, which naturally limits the extent of their expression; they might appear to be great friends, and to a large extent they are, but if one of them is mad about work they for sure can't post it to Facebook.

JonnieCache3• 13 years ago

The important thing is not to leave it logged in while you do this. Log out, and clear all cookies for good measure after every time you check it, otherwise zuck will still be following you around the web via the Like buttons.

gagege• 13 years ago

Facebook is more robust and convenient than email (huge amounts of videos, pictures, "statuses" in one place, plus messaging and a way to search for profiles. Email doesn't have those). Phone calls aren't asynchronous, you both have to find the same block of time to talk. I wish I could just grab a coffee with my friends on the other side of the country.

Facebook is actually a pretty great tool for communicating.

k3n2• 13 years ago

Get their emails/phone numbers, call them once in awhile, grab a coffee.

That works great for those ex-classmates or work friends, who just so happen to live in the same town (or same area of a large town) as you, but that's not why I use FB -- I use it to keep tabs on family. Family members too busy for an hour-long weekly phone call (or I'm too busy to make time for 5-10 of these weekly calls) and too far removed for in-person visits to be viable every few months.

Your advice may work for some, but it falls flat for a lot of common use-cases.

rfnslyr4• 13 years ago

If your only form of communication is random updates/photos from them that you don't actively seek, then you don't really care in the first place do you? You're just consuming because it's there.

Nobody is too busy for a short phone call once in awhile.

snake_plissken• 13 years ago

But how will I find out about Burner parties and extra late night end at 8AM events? Just kidding, I'll just look at the telephone polls outside the coffee shop.

Of all the comments I've seen about deleting a facebook profile, this one resonated very strongly with me. But at the same time I feel a slight sense of trepidation over deleting it. Decisions, decisions.

JonnieCache3• 13 years ago

Don't worry, after you "delete" your profile its still there for a month. You have to hold firm for 30 days of no logins before they "really" delete it.

rfnslyr4• 13 years ago

It's so worth it once you do it. I was on the fence for months about it, then once I deleted it, after like 3 weeks (I had a pretty strong addiction to it) it was completely out of my system. My life is truly better.

Here's another more in depth comment about the same issue of mine: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6555467

I realized after deleting it I truly only have 4 friends in my life that matter.

chadgeidel• 13 years ago

That's a wonderful sentiment that I simply cannot do.

I have friends whose only interaction with "The Internet" is Facebook. They don't email/IM/chat. It's AOL 2.0 basically.

I could call, but I'm busy and they are busy. (family/work has a way of doing that). Coffee is right out as they all live over 500 miles away.

Sometimes asynchronous communication on a shared platform is a good thing.

[edit] k3n said it much better than I: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6921737

viraptor2• 13 years ago

I don't care about personal conenctions (got an email / phone no. to everyone), but there are some communities that pretty much depend on facebook. If you start dancing and are interested in events, you pretty much have to be on facebook. That's where the announcements / updates happen. That's where you find out where various people / teachers will be going. (at least that's the case for the UK and swing/blues)

k-mcgrady3• 13 years ago

I've got the graph search but still (even after signing up to the 'waiting list' on day one) haven't got the 'new' design. I wonder if this means I won't get the video ads...

beaumartinez• 13 years ago

Is your language "English (US)"? I think that was necessary for Graph Search.

k-mcgrady3• 13 years ago

I changed it to US which got me graph search. Still no new design though.

hapless• 13 years ago

It's about time.

Facebook's ad inventory has historically been worthless. It doesn't matter how precisely you target the ads if you don't have the attention of the audience. Facebook had none of the "intent-harvesting" opportunities of search ads: they were just sticking text in the middle of the content you actually wanted to read.

Facebook ad inventory needed to be more like TV. Like Facebook, television advertising has no "intent-harvesting," but it has pretty good targeting. The nature of TV ads gives them a chance to engage the viewer.

Using full-motion video ads, with or without audio, gives advertisers a fighting chance for your attention. The ability to interrupt might be enough to make Facebook's valuation work.

minimaxir• 13 years ago

The funny thing is that with the current implementation of auto-play ads on the mobile FB apps, the moment I see a video animating from Instagram, I scroll past it even faster because it's distracting and usually not worth the 15 seconds.

basicallydan• 13 years ago

I admire your decision to separate yourself from the user experience angle of this and focus on it from a business perspective.

Nevertheless, I hope that this little decision will be enough to put a lot of people off of Facebook because I'd rather see something like this fail than for an application I used to use as an example of pretty good UX and model of simplicity succeed with ad advertising technique normally lumped together with pop-up ads and fake buttons on download sites.

In short, to use a simple, easy to understand phrase: auto-play video ads are lame.

That said, I'm willing to be proven wrong. Maybe they'll come up with some way to make it unintrusive, but that isn't really the point, is it?

kfcm• 13 years ago

As a business owner, I do my best not to antagonize those who use my services. Auto-play video? Not only distracting and annoying, but a drain on batteries.

I think Facebook will find this drives people away.

JulianMorrison• 13 years ago

Consider your attempt to maliciously hack my attention adblocked.

I do NOT WANT to see your bullshit. That is why I am not looking at it. If you subvert my lower-level programming like the evolved motion-startle response to grab my attention, this constitutes misuse of my mental hardware. You do NOT have my consent to do it, and the fact that I live in a world where some services come with attached advertising does NOT constitute consent. I shall continue to use them, with adblock turned on.

chaz• 13 years ago

I'm hoping they'll be able to provide more than just video ads, though. Small businesses tend to not have video creative ready, and compared to the better produced and more entertaining ads that will probably work best on FB, they may be paying a high CPM for pretty poor performance.

Regardless, if it helps more brand ad dollars move into online and mobile, I'm all for it because it's good for our entire industry. I think this could be the biggest ad product in mobile to date, and I'm sure we'll learn a lot.

rcfox• 13 years ago

The article mentions that the ads will only load over WiFi. How do you do that? Is it functionality specific to mobile apps?

TheSOB888• 13 years ago

Well, yeah. The article says "so as to not use the users' data plans", so this seems like it's a mobile feature.

josefresco• 13 years ago

The source of our WiFi is increasingly being capped as well so I'm not so sure this is even an acceptable approach. Just because I have WiFi single doesn't meet I have an unlimited amount of bandwidth to load your crappy video.

Detecting WiFi is a clever hack that works for right now, but for those using cell wifi routers, cell hot spots or with crappy ISPs that have a low cap it won't matter.

bentcorner• 13 years ago

I know in Android you can mark a wifi AP as a hotspot to make apps throttle. I don't know about iOS or WP though.

bmelton• 13 years ago

It's an API available via the Android and iOS SDKs, respectively.

How to detect the network connection type on Android: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2802472/detect-network-co...

How to detect the network connection type on iOS: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/7938650/ios-detect-3g-or-...

johnclass• 13 years ago

Has there been any study on the effectives of video ads. Just wonder how many people close tabs because of video ads; At least I do.

mschuster912• 13 years ago

Adblock Plus takes care of the ads already, and I wouldn't be surprised if it also spares me the video ads.

droopyEyelids• 13 years ago

Looks like you missed the part about everyone moving to 'mobile'

mschuster912• 13 years ago

So what? There are numerous adblockers available for Android and jailbroken Crapple phones - and I'm sure that if the ads are to be loaded over cellular data, users will revolt.

Most people these days live on metered connections, and I surely would rather kill the FB app than have it drain my data coverage.

alisnic• 13 years ago

"finally"?

JonnieCache3• 13 years ago

They were supposed to launch in october or something, and it got pushed back.

JetSpiegel• 13 years ago

One step closer to total irrelevance. Also known as MySpacing.

RexRollman• 13 years ago

Auto plating videos and animated GIFs are the bane of my Internet browsing. Luckily, both are easy to stop with Firefox.

ConceptJunkie• 13 years ago

Back when animated ads were the thing - maybe they still are, I don't know - I quickly realized it was difficult for me to read an article with a monkey bouncing back and forth right next to it or there was an epilepsy-inducing banner telling me I was the 1000000000000000th visitor. It's not even a matter of being annoying, but of literally degrading the value of the content of the site. Back when I couldn't block the ad outright, I would simply resize the window and scroll it off-screen.

I used to use hostfile-based ad blocking and then started using AdBlock when it came along. The thing is, I'm not opposed to ads on principle or anything. I'm just opposed to ads that wreck the product being provided in exchange for the ad. It's like "Sure, I'll let you use my site, but I get to punch you in the head in exchange."

There are plenty of sites I've disabled AdBlock on, although I figure the odds of an ad on any random site being relevant or interesting to me is about 10000 to 1. I spent a while with AdBlock off on Facebook and thought the ads being shown me were really pathetic given how much Facebook should know about me and be able to target me.

But in general, I'm only opposed to ads when they ruin whatever they are being used to monetize. It's one reason I stopped watching broadcast TV now that ads consume 1/3 of the actual viewing time. Autoplaying videos definitely fall in that category, and I normally keep my computer muted anyway because the last thing I want is some stupid website blaring noise at me. I only unmute the computer if I'm specifically going to watch a video or listen to something. And let's face it, these ads will all be for banks or cars or some stupid political candidate using the movie-trailer-voice guy to tell me that so-and-so eats puppies and kittens, etc., etc. It's all just useless noise.

benmorris• 13 years ago

I can't blame them for doing it but I'm sure it will lead to me using facebook less. I probably won't close my account but just use the site less. My newsfeed is increasingly annoying as it is.

pavanred• 13 years ago

The only place I actually find myself watching a video ad is in Hulu, where Hulu provides me an option of watching a video ad now in return of uninterrupted streaming of the content I wanted to watch, which I guess seems fair to me.

I guess that would work better, if you are provided the option of auto-playing video ads in your news feed, or watch one or two video ads for uninterrupted access to the news feed, say for every half hour of usage.

PhasmaFelis• 13 years ago

...Facebook has ads?

Thank God for you, AdBlock.

viraptor2• 13 years ago

If you need a rush of adrenaline one day, try turning it off and visiting some well-known news sites... I was pretty sure the machine I saw it on (parents' computer) was infected. Then realised my parents really need adblock.

salient• 13 years ago

With any luck, this will be the last major step that will cause Facebook's fading into irrelevance.

stefan_kendall• 13 years ago

Auto-playing user videos are almost certainly worse than whatever targeted ads I'm going to see.

pcharles• 13 years ago

I HATE this.

Facebook set to finally launch auto-play video ads in news feeds

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