Facebook begins putting premium autoplay video ads in News Feeds

Those Facebook autoplay video ads— well, call them Premium Video Ads. That’s what the social network just announced it would label the long-anticipated marketing tool that delivers video right into users’ feeds and starts playing 15-second clips automatically. The spots will start consistently rolling into view during late April, a Facebook rep told Adweek, adding that the digital giant “wanted to create a captive, but not interruptive experience.”

Its been quite some time since Facebook started testing video ads. Today, the social networking giant announcedthat it has started integrating these ads into the accounts of its more than 1.2 billion members. “Brands now have another way of engaging people on Facebook with compelling video experiences”, Facebook’s product marketing manager Susan Buckner said in a post on the company’s Business blog. Each 15-second video ad will start playing silently as it appears on the News Feed, and stop when scroll past. If a user clicks on the ad, it will expand into a sound-enabled full-screen view. As for the rates, Facebook did not provide any information, but online reports indicate that daily spots aimed at wide audiences and prime times could cost as much as $US2.5 million/day. The company is currently working with only a small set of advertisers.