Tim Peterson says, “Last year Facebook started interrupting some Live broadcasts with mid-roll video ads, and this year the social network plans to do the same with non-Live videos.

Facebook will inject mid-roll ads into some publishers’ videos after those videos have played for at least 20 seconds, according to a report published by Recode on Monday. The video ads will be limited to 15 seconds in length, three people familiar with the matter told Marketing Land on Monday after Facebook began emailing agencies about the new ad slots’ availability in Facebook’s ad buying tools. A Facebook spokesperson declined to comment.

Last year Facebook, which has been against pre-roll ads, had winked at inserting mid-roll ads into non-live videos. “Next year, we’re going to start thinking about how that type of monetization opportunity could potentially be brought to regular videos as well,” said Facebook’s VP of partnerships, Dan Rose, in an interview with Poynter in September. And the mid-roll ad insertion was made even more inevitable following the news last month that Facebook planned to stock up on original and licensed shows.

For advertisers the mid-roll ads, which Facebook has been testing in Live videos since last August, will be enabled by default when buying a video ad campaign on Facebook. Their placement will be labeled “In-Stream Videos,” and advertisers will have to uncheck the placement if they don’t want their ads to run in the middle of publishers’ videos, the people said. If a video ad runs longer than 15 seconds, then an error message will appear if an advertiser tries to buy the “In-Stream Videos” placement”.

Facebook’s mid-roll video ads will be limited to 15 seconds

Marketing Land

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