Facebook introduced Stories to its platform four years ago, primarily as a way to encourage people to post content that was not highly produced or necessarily photogenic. Now, it is giving some users a chance to earn money from this content. The company today announced a test that will allow some creators to place ads that look like stickers in their stories and receive a share of the resulting revenue. The initial test is “very small”, says Facebook, but hopes to expand it “soon” and then apply the technology to all short videos on Facebook.
In a chat with The VergeYoav Arnstein, director of product management, says he cannot share creators or advertising partners because the test is still in the initial conceptual phase. He said the broader idea, however, is to give advertisers a natural place to fit their content, so, for example, if someone posts a video from Yosemite National Park, a sticker could advertise a local company. Contextual relevance is likely to be the key to making these ads successful, says Arnstein.
History stickers are just one of several updates from the company on its creator platform today. It’s also making its usual in-stream ads available for shorter videos. Previously, only videos of three minutes or more could monetize these ads, but now videos of one minute can receive ads, which will be placed 30 seconds into the content. Videos longer than three minutes can place ads within 45 seconds on the schedule.
To qualify for these in-stream ads, the pages that publish them must have a total of 600,000 minutes viewed any combination of video uploads – on demand, live and previously live – in the past 60 days, as well as five or more active video uploads or previously live videos. In the meantime, live video creators should now have 60,000 live minutes watched in the last 60 days to monetize via in-stream ads, in addition to meeting the requirements of the video-on-demand program.
Facebook is also spending $ 7 million to promote its Stars feature, which allows viewers of live content to tip virtual stars, who pay each creator a penny. The company will make free stars available during certain live streams, and viewers can send them to the presenters of the videos. The team will also present virtual gifts that viewers can send.
“We want to allow more people to really experience this pleasure of supporting a content creator, and we think this is a relatively new behavior that we want to make more ubiquitous across the app, and we think this is a great way to do that,” he says Arnstein on why Facebook is investing in the stars. “We believe this can also help encourage creators to experiment more with the type of content and the type of engagement directly with fans, which will really enable and encourage this type of direct support from fans.”
Finally, Facebook is expanding its paid live events to 24 additional countries and its fan subscriptions to 10 more countries. The company will not collect revenue from any of these resources until at least August 2021.
All of these various ads clearly contribute to the idea that Facebook wants to monetize as much of the creator’s content as possible through ads. The Stories sticker has potentially the biggest implications, especially for Instagram, and can usher in a world that is a little less focused on full-screen ads and more on those integrated with the content itself.