Facebook steps up video efforts with ad plans

Facebook is stepping up its video efforts with a new ‘suggested video’ feature that will reportedly see the social network share ad revenues with video creators for the first time.

According to various US news outlets briefed on the plans, Facebook will place ads between suggested video clips, keeping 45% of revenues and paying 55% out to content partners.

The suggested videos feature will serve up content related to previous videos watched on the site, with the social network already said to be conducting tests with professional content makers like the NBA, Fox Sports, Hearst and Funny or Die.

The move has widely been seen as an effort by Facebook to step up competition with the likes of YouTube and attract more premium content to the site.

A recent research report by Ampere Analysis said it expects Facebook to trigger an “advertising ‘arms race’” by competing directly against YouTube for user-uploaded video audiences and that the trials with content owners like NFL and Fox Sports suggest Facebook is “primed to become a plausible alternative to YouTube.”

Separately, in a ‘Townhall Q&A’ earlier this week in which Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg answered questions from site users, Zuckerberg said that in the future “video will be even more important than photos” on the service.

Asked about the future of Facebook, Zuckerberg said: “We used to just share in text, and now we post mainly with photos. In the future video will be even more important than photos. After that, immersive experiences like VR will become the norm.

Eventually, Zuckerberg said he thinks people will have the power to share “full sensory and emotional experience” and that “one day, I believe we’ll be able to send full rich thoughts to each other directly using technology.”