Facebook has recently launched in-stream video ads as a new placement for marketers to use when setting up ads on the platform. While this feature is currently only available to about 200 advertisers, it will have a direct impact on how your video content will soon be able to generate revenue on Facebook. Continue reading for more details.Video consumption on mobile devices is continuing to grow each year, and by the year 2020 75% of all mobile data traffic will be video. Facebook is looking to capitalize on this trend by offering marketers in-stream video ads for their content.

In-stream ads are non-skippable mid-roll placements on video content that are between 5 to 15 seconds in length. In-stream ads are also available on the audience network as pre-roll and mid-roll placements. For ads on the audience network the videos must be between 5 to 120 seconds and are skippable after 10 seconds if the content is shorter than 30 seconds long.It’s important to understand Facebook’s approach to brand safety and advertiser guidelines, so that you can make your content as eligible as possible to receive ads. Facebook has three pillars of eligibility for monetization on Facebook:

• Community standards What content do we allow on the platform?
• Monetization eligibility standards
• Who gets access to monetize from fb ads demand?
• What content can be monetized?
• Brand safety controls How do we serve the right ads to the right content based on advertiser preferences?

Advertisers will also have controls to dictate where their ads appear on Facebook. Understanding these controls as a creator will help you determine what types of content you should be creating that will be most likely to receive ads on Facebook. See below for the advertiser controls:

• Placement controls - control which platforms & placements your ads appear in
• Category blocking - stop your ads from appearing on sensitive categories. Categories include:
• Mature
• Tragedy & conflict
• Debatable social issues
• Dating (audience network only)
• Gambling (audience network only)
• Pre-campaign publisher list - review a complete list of publishers and places where your ads could run
• Domain/App block list - Stop your ads from appearing on specific websites, apps, or Pages.

We’ll continue to provide you with updates on when in-stream video ads on Facebook will be available to you. In the meantime, feel free to reach out to us with any questions on monetizing videos on Facebook.