Facebook’s Wide Video Ads Finally Debut

Facebook is finally rolling out its video ads to a larger group of advertisers – in a wide format to try to directly compete with the TV ads. The 15 second “premium” video ads will play automatically when a user rolls past them, and if users click on the ads sound will start playing and the ad will expand. Facebook is ensuring that good, well-targeted ads work in users’ feeds by working with Ace Metrix, a response measurement tool that feeds Facebook information about user engagement potential via the ad’s creative, before it appears on Facebook, to weed out bad ads. Facebook wouldn’t say if there are any plans for specific campaigns, but this news today is one of the final moments before the social network launches the ad network after having dawdled for several years; the news first broke in 2012 that Facebook would launch video ads, and only now is it properly coming to fruition. Facebook is pitching video ads at $1 million per day for one of four broad demographics, and all four can be had for $2.4 million.