Facebook to start automatically captioning video ads

Social media giant Facebook is doing everything it can to tap into the video ad spending whirlwind, including adding new features to attract businesses to spend more money on its platform. Facebook is now rolling out a new captioned video captioning tool for marketers that will make those embedded ads nearly impossible to ignore.

Research from the company found that 80 per cent of users react negatively when an ad overtakes control of the audio output and captions have been positioned as the solution to this issue. Facebook conducted an internal study, revealing that video view times increased by as much as 12% when the ads came with subtitles. Facebook is looking to change that with automated captions, as well as by advising advertisers to create a visually striking, easy to follow ad that will catch a user’s attention and perhaps even garner a push of the play button.

Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB) might have stumbled on the flawless formula for increasing user engagement with advertisements by enabling automatic captioning for Facebook advertisements. That is why video ads blasting out sound the second you reach them are frowned upon by consumers. This means, according to Facebook, 100% in-view impressoin buying with verification from analytics provider Moat.

Nearly one billion people (934 million) accessed Facebook on a mobile device daily during the final three months of past year, according to the company’s most recent financial results.

If advertisers are able to do that, then the chances of the users watching the entire video are greater. Users meanwhile, will have more buying and reporting options within video ads to help ad makers understand users’ preferences.

TV commercials still account for a large part of the advertising budgets for brands as compared to mobile video formats.

Facebook’s native video player often leads to users uploading third party videos rather than just sharing links to them.

“Numerous studies and campaigns have made it clear that capturing people’s attention at the very beginning of a video is the most effective way to advertise in a mobile feed environment”, Matt Idema, vice president, monetization product marketing at Facebook, said. These would include Facebook, Messenger, Bing Search, and several others.

Facebook to start automatically captioning video ads