Facebook drives video ad strategy by targeting desktop users with games

As you might know, video on Facebook is massive. With over four billion native videos on the platform every day, the company says that people are uploading, sharing and discovering videos on Facebook more than ever. To boost this number even further and show how effective video advertising can be, Facebook has announced that it will soon be rolling out video ads for desktop.

It will do so by focusing on game developers first. About 445-million people who play Facebook-connected games across desktop and mobile every month. For users, this means that video ads of games like Farm Heroes and Candy Crush will in the near future start playing automatically in their News Feeds.

For marketers, the major advantage Facebook video ads has over TV ads is not only the cost, but also the ability to target specific audiences based on demographics.

During the company’s first quarter earnings report, Facebook’s COO Sheryl Sandberg stressed the importance of video ads on the platform:

I think all marketers have the opportunity to do video, and that’s pretty exciting, including SMBs (small-to-medium businesses) who would never be able to hire a film crew and buy a TV ad. We’re seeing those put video in. Over 1 million SMBs have posted videos and done really small ad buys around them. And that’s pretty cool because I don’t think there are probably 1 million advertisers who have bought TV ads in that same period of time.

Early adopter of the system and game developer Plamee’s Michael Velkes says: “The desktop app ad unit is the best converting non-incentive ad unit available in the industry. Adding this with video is a game-changer for the quality and loyalty of players.”

According to the release, 30 000 new Facebook-connected desktop and mobile games launched last year. At the same time, the social network rolled out its video creative for mobile, enabling advertisers to purchase mobile app ads with video creative through Power Editor.

Video seems to becoming the blue giant’s main source of revenue. With the expansion to desktop, the revenue pie is only expected to become bigger. Digital video advertising revenue in the US is expected to rise 30% to US$7.77-billion this year.

According to ValueWalk, around 75% of Facebook’s ad revenue will be contributed by mobile ads by 2016.

Facebook is doing a limited release of desktop video app ads with a select group of partners and the product will be available broadly “soon”.