Facebook expands video ads formats for Audience Network

Advertisers can now run in-stream and in-article video ads that are meant to drive brand awareness

It's hard to overstate how important video has become to Facebook's overall growth. There are 100 million hours of video being watched on Facebook every day, and videos have become a key tool for advertisers on the site to reach Facebook's 1.65 billion monthly active users. 

Now Facebook wants to extend the capabilities of its video ads, announcing two new video ad formats that will be available for companies on its Audience Network platform. 

The Audience Network, which debuted in April of 2014, is made up of third-party apps and websites that "advertisers can use to extend the reach of their Facebook and Instagram ads."

In the beginning it was mostly app install ads; the company started selling video ads on the Audience Network last August of last year, but those were direct response ads, meaning those that are specifically designed to get the user to take some kind of action, like buying something, or downloading an app. 

The new formats, though, will "offers a solution that optimizes results for marketers focused on brand awareness and recall." That means that they can be run in new types of formats, where the user isn't going to be expected to do anything. 

So, for example, if Jack in the Box has a 30 second video ad on Newsfeed, one that is designed to spread awareness of the brand, they now have the option to extend that to the Audience Network, while before, they would only have been able to do so if the object was to get the viewer to download their app, for example.

With brand awareness as the main objective, Audience Network will now deliver ads in-stream, which will play before, during or after video content on third party apps and sites across mobile and desktop. They will be seen on sites that include USA Today Sports Media Group.

They will also be available in–article, meaning these video ads will appear on mobile pages of publishers, such as Daily Mail. They will be seen between paragraphs of text and play automatically, though the view has to opt-in for sound, so they won't be too annoying or intrusive. 

Facebook does not disclose the size of its Audience Network, but its partners make up over 6 percent of time spent on mobile. To put that in perspective, Twitter and Snapchat combined only make up 3 percent. In addition the number of sites and apps on the network has grown 620 percent year-over-year.

Advertisers don't get to choose the publishers that the ads appear on; instead the system will optimize to reach the kind of people and objective they are trying to reach.

The company also does not disclose its revenue split with publishers, though it it said to take 30 percent of revenue. 

Facebook put out videos of example of how the new ad formats will work:

(Image source: ndtv.com)