Facebook to include ads now in Short Videos and Stories

In a broader push to attract popular social-media influencers, Facebook Inc. plans to run more advertising on shorter videos. This new feature will help them compete with rivals TikTok.

The social media giant said ads will appear on clips as short as one minute. according to a blog post on Thursday, which said that earlier only videos at least three minutes long were eligible. Those ads will usually play after 30 seconds of a shorter video and videos longer than three minutes can place ads as soon as 45 seconds into the video. Eligibility criteria are also being expanded to include popular creators who primarily record live or short videos.

The initial test is “very small,” Facebook said but hoped it could expand it “soon” and finally apply the technology to all short-form videos on Facebook. “We want to make sure that there is more content that can be monetized,” said Yoav Arnstein, Facebook’s director of product management. “We know that short-form video is becoming far more popular.”

From these ads, 45% of the revenue goes to Facebook with the rest of it bagged by the creators. The new changes may help the California-based company lure influencers who have thrived on other platforms that specialize in short-form videos, such as ByteDance Ltd.’s TikTok and Snap Inc.’s Snapchat.

Four years after the company introduced Stories, user-generated posts that disappear after 24 hours, it will experiment with letting some creators make money from Facebook Stories with ad stickers laid on top, the company said.

With a huge surge in popularity for TikTok, a new battle has kicked-off for talented video creators, with social-media companies moving with urgent haste to offer new ways to make money on their platforms.

According to a report by Bloomberg, “last month, Twitter Inc. outlined a potential subscription product that will let people charge followers for access to special content or experience. Snap and TikTok have also been experimenting with direct payments to creators of popular content.”

Facebook’s subscription program also allows creators and businesses to earn revenue via paid digital events, direct compensation from fans, and brand partnerships. In 2020, the number of content creators earning $10,000 a month from Facebook’s programs grew 88%. According to the company, during that same period, content creators pulling in $1,000 a month grew 94%.

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