Facebook To Delay Roll Out Of Video Ads

Facebook is postponing the roll out of video ads on its News Feed until an undetermined time later this year it has emerged.

The social media giant had originally trialled rollover video advertising on some users' feeds in December, but has now decided to put the official roll out on hold.

Originally trialled during that time for the Lionsgate film, Divergent, Facebook has found it now needs to deal with a number of factors before convincing advertisers the platform is right for them.

First and foremost, the firm wants to ensure its video ads can offer advertisers high quality analytics - something users on the platform have become accustomed to with its current offerings.

However, advertisers are also reportedly concerned about the lack of targeting currently offered by the Facebook video ads. At present, there are only four options: men over 35, men under 35, women over 35 and women over 35.

Then of course, there is the price. To aim for all four targets, advertisers would be expected to shell out around $2.4 million at present - although to offset this, Facebook does guarantees that the ad will be in the first position on all targeted demographics News Feeds.

Mashable quotes three people close to Facebook as saying the new release date could be as early as March and as late as mid to late summer time. The sources also hinted at a price range for each advertisement of anything between a staggering $1mil and $2.5mil, per day. This price has now dropped to $600,000 a day if the sources are to be believed.

Although even the renewed price guides may seem excessive, when compared to other social media marketing opportunities on similar platforms it is not actually as high as it would seem.  For instance, a YouTube page takeover is $400,000 and a Yahoo! page takeover $450,000 according to Digiday.

This is not the first time Facebook has toyed with video advertising, and then promptly turned an about-face. Even before the most recent trial in December 2013, it had introduced some video ad options to advertisers in January 2013. Similarly, in September 2013, it also tested video ads in the News Feed with the foodchain Subway.

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