Facebook Brings Autoplay, Better Targeting To Its Mobile Ad Network, Grows Its Marketing Foothold

A carousel ad, one of several new advertising features Facebook recently introduced to its mobile ad network. (Courtesy of Facebook)

The auto-play video ads that users see when they check their news feed have been a big money-maker for Facebook. Now, the social network is bringing auto-play advertisements and several new features to apps in its mobile ad network, giving Facebook more ways to expand its influence in the digital advertising market.

The auto-play ads and new features will be available to publishers and developers on the “Audience Network” on Apple’s iOS and Android, the company said in a post on Tuesday. The move gives Facebook the chance to sell more video ads to marketers without upsetting Facebook users by putting more ads on its own apps.

“The Audience Network has been allowing third-party apps to monetize users for a while, and now these apps will see a greater return with a more diverse set of ad units to show,” Jan Rezab, CEO of social media analytics firm Socialbakers said in an email. “Introducing auto-play video here is a smart move for Facebook. It’s been performing well for marketers on the Facebook platform, and it’s a format that’s becoming very familiar to users.”

Facebook’s mobile ad business makes up a growing portion of its overall revenue. In the three months ending on June 30, mobile accounted for 76% of advertising revenue, up from 62% a year earlier. Digital video advertising revenue in the U.S. is expected to rise 34% to $7.77 billion this year, according to forecasting firm eMarketer.

In addition to autoplay ads, Facebook is making other new formats available to apps on the network who support full-screen ads. These apps can now be included in marketing campaigns that show product ads, known as “dynamic product ads,” to users based on items users have browsed on the web. Other new formats include carousel ads, which display a series of images, as well as a click-to-play video ad tool.

“The new features Facebook is rolling out for dynamic product ads mean ads will be more deeply targeted and relevant to the users they’re shown to,” said Rezab. “Facebook is trying to allow marketers to prioritize customers who will make a purchase.”

Facebook created its mobile ad network last year. Native ads now make up more than 80% of impressions on the network.

The social network has been scaling up video ads on Instagram and recently launched spherical and embedded videos. Facebook says it generates 4 billion video views per day, but has come under pressure for promoting this metric. Facebook counts a video view as three seconds, including views of auto-play videos, while its competitor Google-owned YouTube usually counts a view at around 30 seconds.

Video creators have criticized Facebook’s video view metric, saying that many of the videos Facebook counts in its tally were lifted from their original source and uploaded through Facebook’s native player, rewarding the Facebook page for the view and failing to reimburse the content creator. Video creators have also said that three seconds is not long enough to claim that a viewer was meaningfully engaged with a video, especially when YouTube tends to count views much later. In a blog post, YouTube star Hank Green noted a report from the ad agency Ogilvy and Tubular Labs that found that more than 70% of Facebook’s highest performing videos came from other sources, such as YouTube.

Facebook has responded to many of these criticisms, saying it has a system to help prevent unauthorized videos from being uploaded to its site, as well as tools to allow content owners to report potential copyright infringement. The social network said it removes unauthorized content when it receives a valid notice and suspends accounts of people with repeated violations. Facebook also said it is exploring news ways to help protect content owners. Green noted in his post, however, that because it isn’t possible to search for videos on Facebook, it is difficult for creators to track when their content is being freebooted. He also said that the fact that Facebook’s algorithm favors videos uploaded natively leads to more copyright violations.

In June, Facebook gave advertisers the option to choose to pay for a view once a video has played for 10 seconds. The company previously required advertisers to pay the instant a video ad, auto-play or not, came into view.

By comparison, YouTube has long offered marketers a product called TrueView under which they get charged only if a viewer doesn’t skip an ad—an option users have usually after four or five seconds—or if the viewer watches at least 30 seconds of the ad. Twitter charges advertisers for video views of three seconds or longer, but only when the video is completely visible in the user’s screen. Last year, Facebook’s share of the worldwide mobile advertising market was 17.4%, while Google’s share was 38.2% and Twitter’s was 2.5%, eMarketer said.

Follow me on Twitter @kchaykowski and e-mail me at kchaykowski@forbes.com.

Facebook Brings Autoplay, Better Targeting To Its Mobile Ad Network, Grows Its Marketing Foothold