We reported back in May that Facebook would be bringing auto-playing video ads to the News Feed but that still hasn’t happened. With the end of summer quickly approaching, rumors of video ads are heating up again. Today, Bloomberg reports that the social network is working to sell each video ad for a rumored $2.5 million. This corroborates rumors that Facebook would be making an estimated $4 million per day from video ads.
The video ads are also rumored to run for a mere 15 seconds. If that number sounds familiar to you, that’s because Instagram, which was purchased by Facebook, has a 15 second recording limit. It would make sense if Facebook brought the video ads to Instagram as well as users will be used to seeing 15 second videos anyway.
Twitter began the short video recording phenomenon with Vine, but it has yet to monetize the service. Twitter’s own apps and websites show “Sponsored Tweets,” which are paid advertisements. If Facebook’s video ads are successful, Twitter will likely adopt the advertising model as well.
With 15 second video ads, Facebook is hoping to move advertising money from traditional TV ads to the internet. Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg said, ““Every night, 88 million to 100 million people are actively using Facebook during prime-time TV hours in the United States alone,” during the company’s earnings call last week.
Still, Facebook needs to be careful about frustrating users with the new video ads. CEO Mark Zuckerberg reportedly already pushed back the roll out of video ads twice, fearing it would upset users. To make ads as unobtrusive as possible, a maximum of three ads will be shown a day.
