Why Facebook brought autoplay to Audience Network
Mr Green’s global social media manager Heather Cooper looks at the impact of Facebook’s recent announcement on social media marketers
Facebook announced the addition of several new high-performing advertising formats to its Audience Network this month, including autoplay video ads.
Audience Network, first introduced in April 2014 at Facebookâs F8 conference, is the companyâs mobile ad network. It gives advertisers the ability to leverage Facebookâs unparalleled ad-targeting capabilities to reach users within a network of apps.
For app developers, bringing advertising into apps is as simple as integrating the Audience Network SDK. To begin monetizing their apps, developers can choose from Audience Networkâs three types of ad units: banner ads, interstitial ads and customizable native ads.
With 5xâs more apps using native ads than at the start of 2015, developers are now able to integrate autoplay video ads, allowing Facebookâs 2-million advertisers to reach their audiences with video creative beyond the News Feed.
For operators, itâs a chance to catch the eyes of users and players in third-party apps with attractive, exciting and engaging video content that leads to increased brand awareness and conversion. An ad unit is only as good as the content thatâs used in it. Thus, budgets will likely shift to video production to meet the growing demands of conveying the right message to the right target at the right time.
In addition to autoplay ads, Facebook is introducing click-to-play interstitials. These units tend to be integrated during those pauses in app content; for example, during the momentary break when moving from one level to the next in a game, a full-screen takeover video pops up with a click-to-play button. The value for operators is clearâby capturing a mobile playerâs attention while he is focused on his device, heâs only a click away from an install or a registration.
Facebookâs move expands two of the most powerful components in its advertising portfolio todayâmobile and video. Of Facebookâs 968 million daily active users, 87% are logging in on mobile devices. That volume is driving the companyâs mobile advertising revenue to 76% of its total advertising revenue, as of Q2 2015.
Beyond video, Facebook is also adding carousel and dynamic product ads to the Audience Network lineup. The interstitial carousel format allows advertisers to show up to five images within a single ad unit. Further, to better cross-sell and upsell, advertisers can use dynamic product ads to display a collection of related products based on a users latest actions, increasing relevance for the user and ROI for the advertiser.
Facebookâs focus continues to be on providing the best experience for its users; that means limiting the level of disruption caused by advertising in News Feed. With these developments to Audience Network, Facebook is applying its learnings from its on-platform ads to grow its ads business beyond its namesake product. For developers and marketers in the industry, itâs a win-win.
NOTE:
Facebookâs autoplay video ad unit in News Feed has been a strong performer for marketers since it was first rolled out internationally in May 2014. Today, Facebook boasts 4 billion video views per day across its platform, including autoplay video ads.
As of November 2014, brands began uploading more video content to Facebook than to YouTube, a study published by Socialbakers shows. The introduction of video ads in Audience Network gives marketers another channel through which to advertise video and positions Facebook as an even stronger contender against YouTubeâs TrueView video ad solution.