Facebook video ads, or how can Facebook get more annoying?
Facebook has just launched their long awaited video advertising, and soon you’ll be seeing it in your news feed, whether you want them or not. It’s all part of the ‘free’ Facebook service many of us are members of.
The ads have been in testing for a long time. Understandably, Facebook wanted to try and get it right due to fears of alienating its 1.2+ billion users.
The ads will run for 15 seconds, will autoplay when they appear on your screen as you scroll, however, they will be muted. Selecting the ad (clicking, tapping, hovering over?) will unmute and open the ad to fill up your screen. It’s unclear whether it will begin to play from the beginning or continue on, however, the safe bet is on starting from beginning.
If you’re not keen on seeing video ads clutter up and/or distract you from your news feed, there will likely be ways to block them using 3rd party tools or techniques. You should be able to simply scroll past the offending ads in your feed. Also, as the ads are flashed based, you can use one of the many flash content blocker extensions available out there on the internet. Most are free.
