Facebook Tests YouTube-Inspired Fewer, Longer Ad Breaks With Ad Pods

Online video streaming is an essential aspect of how most people end up consuming various kinds of content on a regular basis. With all of that having been said and now out of the way, it is important to note that there’s no such thing as a free lunch and the companies that provide this service such as YouTube and now Facebook are going to try and profit from it in some way, shape or form because of the fact that this is the sort of thing that could potentially end up making it possible for the service to continue in the long run.

Facebook is experimenting with its ads on its videos. Videos that use the in stream ad format, as opposed to a pre-roll ad format for example, will now have a new option that they can use in terms of their ads. Instead of having two midroll ads pop up at different points in time, they would now be able to create what is called an ad pod. This would be a set of 2 back to back ads that would be about fifteen seconds long each and would be either skippable or unskippable. Only a few companies are restricted from making skippable ads so there is a chance that many of the ads users will see here would be skippable after a few seconds.

Facebook is doing this in an attempt to reduce the number of breaks that users would have to deal with over the course of their viewing experience. The ads have to be shown anyway, and clumping them together would make it easier for users to have an otherwise smooth viewing experience. Some users might not like this concept due to the long duration of ad time that would suddenly interrupt their video at some point.

H/T: AW.

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