The biggest social network is about to eat more of your data and space on your timeline. According to WSJ, Facebook is about to start auto playing video advertisement in your newsfeed. According to the Tuesday report by the wall street Journal Auto play videos will be appearing on mobile devices and slow show up in users’ newsfeed this Thursday.
We do not know how long these videos will last but this will definitely leave Facebook smiling all the way to the bank because video ads will definitely have to cost more than the usual ads Facebook has been serving. WSJ reports that Lion’s Gate will be among the pioneer advertisers using Facebook’s new feature.
This AutoPlay video feature was supposed to be launched earlier this year but due to rumored engineering problems and the possibility that the users might not react nicely to it. The test video ads by auto playing the videos without sound and a user had to click to let the sound play. Starting Thursday you get both Video and sound auto playing.
I bet most Users are not going to like it. However we haven’t liked some changes on Facebook and we didn’t have a choice. A few elite users might make publishers of AD blocking software happy.
What does this mean to Africa?
Well, Bandwidth, Internet speeds and high internet prices are the cries and woes of most Techies and People in Africa. And if it means using my small data bundle to play a video of brand that’s not relevant to me or an AD I have seen over and over again am going to get pissed and probably turn to an AD blocker. Because the shouts of user, call it feedback aren’t always listened to.
Social Networking is taking a global change and they are becoming more commercial, the difference is how Ads are commercialized. Some Ads can be tolerated other might not, remember the Google taking us away from Yahoo due to poor advertising algorithms.
