Sick of auto-play video ads on Facebook? They’re not going away
If you thought popup ads were bad in the early days of the internet, loud videos that automatically play on visiting a site are even worse.
Never one to let a marketing opportunity go to waste, Facebook Inc. began integrating auto-play videos into people’s Facebook newsfeeds over the last year, and they are becoming more and more common.
For a short while, mobile devices were less affected by the new video ads, but a recent blog post on Facebook’s developer site indicates that might not be the case for long.
“With more and more people uploading, sharing and discovering videos on Facebook, marketers are finding video to be an important asset to drive key business metrics,” writes Facebook Inc.’s Jun Li. “Moving forward, when eligible, video mobile app ads will play automatically in News Feed. Additionally, mobile app advertisers are now able to purchase mobile app ads with video creative through Power Editor.”
Exactly what qualifies for “eligible” video ads is unclear. Facebook could put limitations onto the length or content of ads in order to be allowed to auto-play.
The same blog post also outlined new features that will allow advertisers to determine how many people they want their ads to reach and how many “impressions” they will try to make.
How to turn off Video Auto-Play
The good news is, at least for the time being, auto-play can be turned off in Facebook’s settings. The videos would still show up in your newsfeed, but scrolling past them would not cause them to automatically start playing.
We can only hope that this option will apply to ads in the future. Otherwise, for the web at least, there are options such as third party browser extensions like Flashblock and NoScript that could prevent videos from playing altogether.
Website
Log in to the Facebook website. Then, go to Settings>Videos and set Auto-Play Videos to “Off.”
Mobile
Open the Facebook App. Then, go to Settings and change Video Auto-play to “Off.”
There is also an option to allow videos to auto-play only when you are using Wi-Fi, which is important for users who have limited data plans.
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