Facebook Auto-Playing Video Ads On The Way to Facebook Feeds

http://www.techhive.com/article/203...coming-soon-to-a-facebook-feed-near-you-.html

"If you already hate sponsored ads plugging up your Facebook news feed, just wait until you see what could be coming in the next few weeks. Facebook is preparing to introduce video ads as early as June or July, according to AdAge. Here's the real kicker: The report claims those ads will start auto-playing the second they hit your news feed."


Great time not to be a Facebook user.

 

Will the ads start to play even if "click to play" is enabled in Chrome? I believe maybe FF also started C2P by default but could be wrong about that.

 

That's a good question, and one I don't know the answer to. Even if C2P works for it, you still have the issue of all this crap spamming up your feed. Ad Blockers as they are now for sure won't work, they'll make certain of that. I understand Facebook has obligations to bring in money since it's a public entity now, but Mark has a tendency to do things in the most invasive manner possible. Google needs to learn this lesson with Gmail as well. Don't "get in the way", and ads will be much more accepted by users. If it works the way it sounds like it will, folks will start trying to find ways to get around or block these feed ads. And, inevitably, the experience is going to go bad once both sides start fighting each other.

 

Digging the hole deeper. Just when the media would have you presume Facebook was actually concerned about losing users. That's the spirit keep these ideas flowing. I'd be happy to see Facebook become another MySpace.

 

You'd have to come up with something much better and less intrusive to knock Facebook down at this point. No one has done that yet and, sadly, it would be really really difficult to avoid using user data as a way to make money unless you created a pay service. Whether anyone or enough people would pay for such a service is up in the air, yet doubtful.

Facebook is very different from MySpace. Even in its prime, MySpace was basically a teenage hangout and not used as a corporate powerhouse like Facebook has become. When MySpace died, we lost a fun, sometimes annoying experience of the early web. If and when (realistically when, nothing lasts forever) Facebook dies, the business world will lose an incredibly important tool.

 

I certainly hope AdBlock Plus for Firefox is going to block this

 

I have my doubts. A lot of Facebook services simply refuse access if you have ads blocked at all. My uneducated guess is that it will work similar to Hulu and a few other services. Adblock Plus will be persona non grata.

 

A bit more information explained here: http://readwrite.com/2013/04/17/new-facebook-ads-go-big-but-get-less-social-users-will-hate-them

These will supposedly be full-screen video ads (or this is something entirely different from the earlier report I linked). Up to 15 second run times, 3 times a day per user. If they do work it the way Hulu does, it's going to be a major pain.

 

They are trying hard to monetize FB.

 

They don't have a choice now. The moment they went public Mr. Zuckerberg became a slave to shareholders. He was already invasive enough (then again, as he so bluntly pointed out, users readily handed over their data to him), but now he's pressured to dial it up to 11 in order to not be burnt at the stake on Wall Street.

 

For example? I don't use Facebook that much but I use it enough and have never run into an issue while using adblock plus.

 

Im not an economist or anything but i think that move was a big mistake for Facebook.

 

Being a slave to stakeholders is the whole purpose of going public.
If you do not like something, don't use it. No?
Mrk

 

Or push to change it. Of course this simple logic does not quite capture user options considering this is electronic media. If we were unhappy with something off-line we'd have to write letters, make calls, and complain. Users always have options, they just have to be a bit inventive. I really don't have to do any of those things to mitigate bad ideas crafted by Zuckerberg. The question is whether people will make the same effort or move on. This will depend on how much further he pushes things, and on what else comes out as an alternative to existing social networking services.

 

I'm guessing that most FB users would just "accept" or "workaround" this change. A few may downright reject it to the point of giving up FB altogether but I'd say this is an exception.

They must have made some calculations and come to a conclusion that the benefits outweigh the risks. They're trying to maximize their revenue...even if it is at the cost of upsetting some FB users. It's business after all. You win some...you lose some.

 

It will change the moment people hit the streets with RPG-7.
Until then, it's just another day in the world of Internet drama.
Mrk

 

This....I agree.

 

Does facebook actually rely on flash running to work correctly.?
I mean can flash be turned off altogether and still be able to use FB.

 

There isn't much changing of the mind of Zuckerberg and a few others. People as a whole much prefer to "let someone else worry about it", which is why many things don't change. Facebook at one time actually let users vote on upcoming changes, and you probably already know how that turned out. If not, well, users rarely bothered and, when they did, the percentage of users voting was so low they might as well had not even held a vote. Of course now that FB belongs to shareholders, all users can do is band together in a large enough crowd that it scares off a change, or quit.

@Safeguy: They'll just get used to it, most likely. Home users that use FB for simple personal use and don't have employers forcing them to open it up for inspection can just flip the bird at FB. Everybody else, sadly, probably have no voice unless their bosses don't like it either.

 

That's the reason why I'd say this is a smart move by FB. They chose the right time. There are plenty of 'haters' out there but you can't deny that FB has become a well-known brand of it's own and to some extent a necessity for many. They've extended their legs and arms across the world. This is just about the time for them to expand it further, with them having the knowledge of users being either "hooked" or "dependent" on the service. Video ads are not strong enough a motivation to push users away...at least for the masses. This is even more so for businesses that makes use of it as a networking platform to get in touch with their customers. There's no doubt in my mind that there'll be ad-blocking solutions to this but if you look at it from a profit perspective, FB is still better off implementing this than without. If only I knew Mark and became his partner...

 

Oh, I don't know. From the outside looking in, the million/billionaire lifestyle looks pretty sweet. But I know enough high-profile folks that some days wouldn't mind being a "nobody" again, hehe. Just look at it from Mark's perspective. He now has Wall Street and the governments in more than one country looking at his every move, the media is always ready to make or break you depending on what a handful of "analysts" think, and, well, as "Bigs" put it so long ago, "The more money we come across, the more problems we see.".

 

Well, most people are never satisfied with what they have. The well-known wants their privacy. The unknowns want to have a shot at fame. For a somebody, the media tries to break you. For a nobody, you have the other 'nobodies' trying to break you. Problems are everywhere. You either face it or you don't. I'm human...I'd love to get a taste of the million/billionaire lifestyle lol.

 

The point that I was making is that electronic media is not as limited as printed media when it comes to change. People don't have to protest a company to bring about the changes they want. They can do it themselves, as I have by utilizing a number of third party tools, add-ons, and scripts to hide/block/modify Facebook elements like timeline. I don't participate in online surveys, polls, etc. typically with exception to some threads here. So I really can't speculate on such a poll except to say the people that care about these changes don't use Facebook. So the only results they are getting are from people like me that care about privacy, presuming we feel inclined to participate and the rest of the facebook guppies that use the service but don't really care unless facebook does something that impacts them negatively like accidentally deleting there profile details when they click the Like button. That would interest me to vote a LIKE.

 

For now AdBlock Plus is working just fine and blocks almost all Facebook ads. I'm not sure how will the new video ads will work, but as long as they are browser related (and I can't see how they could work otherwise) they can and will be blocked.

 

No it does not rely on flash.

In fact I just gave it a shot without flash enabled, had zero problems in using Facebook.