UPDATED 14:28 EDT / JULY 02 2015

NEWS

Facebook is testing out ad-supported videos to draw in more premium content

Facebook is continuing to push for more video on its platform, and the social network is now testing out ad-supported videos to draw in premium content that could give YouTube something to worry about.

The new program would work similarly to Google’s YouTube Partner Program, which shares a portion of ad revenue earned on videos with content creators. Not only does this provide an incentive for people to create content for YouTube, but it also allows more successful creators to become full-time video makers, providing the site with an even higher volume of quality content.

Facebook’s new ad-supported video program has the same goal in mind.

“A lot of [our partners] have said this will be a big motivation to start publishing a lot more video content to Facebook,” Dan Rose, Facebook’s VP of partnerships, told Re/code in a recent interview. “That’s exactly what we’re hoping for.”

Video is one of Facebook’s biggest focuses right now, and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said during a Q&A session last year that he believed that Facebook would be “mostly video” within the next few years. There were even reports earlier this year that Facebook was attempting to poach some of YouTube’s more popular stars to entice them to create exclusive video content for Facebook.

“I would like to remain on YouTube,” a source told The Wall Street Journal at the time. “But some of the competing offers are incredibly attractive.”

While YouTube has the advantage of being the most established video sharing site on the market, Facebook already has an enormous built-in audience, and with close to 800 million daily active mobile users, there are plenty of people who could upload video to Facebook just as easily as they would add pictures of their kids.

The ease of uploading video and the fact that most Facebook users already have their own audience (friends and family) is one of the social networks biggest advantages over YouTube, but currently YouTube still holds most of the market when it comes to premium user-created video.

If Facebook’s new ad-revenue program is a success, however, that could change very quickly.

Photo by melenita2012 

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