As a follow up to story we published in December announcing the testing of auto-playing video ads in Facebook’s news feed, it may come as welcome news to most people that Facebook has decided to delay the rollout of these ads until as late as summer.
Mashable reported this week that the launch of these ads could come as early as March or as late as summer. Facebook is taking their time reviewing tests of the video ads while ensuring they can keep up with demand and provide the high quality analytics advertisers have come to expect from Facebook’s ad platform.
Another reason for the delay is that advertisers are put off by the lack of targeting and high price point. As a small business, don’t expect to be able to run these ads. The going rate is now $600,000 per day. This is actually a decrease from the original price range of $1 million and $2.5 million per day.
These ads don’t come with a lot of targeting options either, only four to be exact: men over 35, men under 35, women over 35 and women over 35. You could also hit them all at once for a price of around $2.4 million.
However, Facebook guarantees that the ad will be in the first position on the News Feed for everyone who logs on that day, which puts their price more or less in line with a page takeover ad on YouTube or Yahoo.
Advertisers aside, users are also put off by the idea of auto-playing video ads. Mashable conducted a poll of 1,130 readers, 61% of which said they “don’t love” the idea of auto-play ads in the News Feed. So Facebook needs to ask themselves if the extra revenue is worth ticking off their users and risking them abandoning the site.
Would you be put off by auto-playing video ads at the top of your News Feed? Let me know what you think in the comments.
