First it was plain old social media; then it became mobile and then transformed into videos. Now, Facebook is gambling the biggest media of them all: Television.
As per reports coming in from credible sources, Facebook now wants to conquer the lucrative television advertisement market, and the first step already been taken.
They are creating the platform which will enable them to lure advertisers away from TV channels, and inspire them to spend their dollars on their own platform.
Facebook’s App For Set-up Boxes
In the first instant, it may sound an unholy combination: Facebook with TV!
But it is actually happening, right now as you are reading these words. Facebook is creating an app for TV set-top boxes which will enable them to establish a strong presence within TV audience. They are already in talks with leading companies in this sector, such as Apple TV to forge an arrangement in this regard.
As per reports coming in, this unique Facebook app would be installed within set-top boxes, and would stream videos primarily meant for social media users. Hence, there is a possibility that those cute cat videos which you happen to watch on Facebook would now be visible on your smart TV as well.
Besides, they are also negotiating with leading media companies to create exclusive long-form video content, which can be streamed via their app for set-top boxes.
Interestingly, Facebook will not monetize these videos like Youtube, whose advertisements roll out before the video starts; but rather, they will insert advertisements within the video, and in order to ensure that viewer watches that ad, the content has to be top-rated.
An unnamed official familiar with these programs said, “If there’s good video content, you’ll actually watch a couple thirty-second video ads,”
Why Has TV Become A Priority For Facebook?
As per some insider reports, Facebook is attempting to form a ‘video only’ mode of social network, and every product which they are developing right now pertains to optimizing video experience for their users.
Some of the developers working with Facebook on their new app for set-top boxes even started calling it as a ‘mobile TV’, signaling a massive shift towards television and videos in the coming days.
And the reason is plain and simple: Revenues.
Facebook is world’s 2nd largest digital advertisement platform after Google, and the majority of their revenues is generated from the advertisements placed in and around the News Feed section.
However, this ratio is drastically going down now, and they need to come out with fresh avenues for placing advertisements. As per Reuters, Facebook will report a growth of 46% for 2016’s last quarter, which is their slowest growth in terms of revenues in last 5 quarters. And saturation of News Feed based advertisements is the main reason for the same.
This is the reason Facebook has been experimenting a lot with videos lately: they introduced and now refining their Live-streaming capabilities, introduced Videos in Instagram feed and testing newer monetization methods which include insertion of ads in between the videos, and allowing publishers to monetize the videos on a revenue-sharing model.
It would be really interesting to see how Facebook’s rendezvous with TV ads work out, and how much dent can be possibly made in this sector.