Facebook have been talking about this for a while but now they are actually testing video ads on a small number of news feeds.  It is said, from Thursday, some users may see an ad for an upcoming film called Divergent.  As you scroll down your news feed, the advertisement will appear and it will automatically start to play, although there will be no sound.  You will need to click on the video to hear it.  Facebook have confirmed this is still in testing and has not been signed off so it is not guaranteed to go ahead. The testing is only going to last for one day but more are planned for the future. This is so they can look at the analytics to see if it is working and what can be tweaked to enhance the experience.  They will look at stats showing how many people have seen the ad, how many clicks there have been to view the content, how long people spend watching the video, and the number of shares, likes and comments received. Over the last couple of days we have seen a lot of people on Facebook post about this subject saying they will close their account if this happens and have generally been quite negative.  Is it really that bad? There is already adverts showing on newsfeeds and this would be no different to those.  All you need to do is scroll past it if it’s something you are not interested in.  Also, a few comments mentioned that having auto play videos will eat up their mobile phone data.  Facebook have already thought of this and it will only play the advertisement if the device is attached to WIFI. So what do you think of this? Good idea? If you use You Tube there are, in many cases, videos in front if the clip you want to watch.  Some of these can be skipped after 5 seconds and others can’t.  Facebook isn’t a “video content” site so all they want you to do is watch an advert.  This might work if it is a trailer for a film, a computer game or even a music video.  If it’s a video ad for gazebos or carpets will people be inclined to click it? We don’t know.  We think marketing departments will have to produce adverts that make you want to watch it.  This means within the first 2-3 seconds there needs to be something to grab your attention or else people will just scroll past it. So will you be closing your account if this goes ahead or will you just ignore the advert and scroll past it?]]>