Facebook has been unusually bad at coming into new trends, they took quite a while to be turned from HTML mobile to native application development and had trouble really understanding the concept of a simple photo app, leading to the acquisition of the most popular app at the time, Instagram.
Video is an area Facebook is also pretty bad in, although their video player works impressively well and looks better than most of those ugly plug-in players. The problem Facebook is currently having on the video front is monetization of videos, similar to the problem Vine is having.
There may not be a problem in a few weeks, according to a new report detailing Facebook’s delayed plans to implement the auto-play video advertisements on the social network, a new way for advertisers to find the right audience.
The amount of short videos watched on Facebook has grown substantially in the past few months and analysts predict a lot of Vine’s are actually watched on Facebook – instead of on the app platform. Large ‘Best Vine’ groups have grown out on Facebook, posting daily videos seven seconds videos onto Facebook.
There is an audience who would rather watch a five second video than have a few links and text-boxes showing advertisement. Not only can video advertisement be more immersive but it has a lot more quality than a text-box ad.
Facebook is bound to get a ton of flack from the billions using the social network, but at the end of the day if they can implement video advertisement on the social network before Twitter or any other rival, they make it more likely to be used by advertising agencies.
YouTube is obviously the dominant player in this role – but there core audience is watching videos all the time. It is going to be harder for Facebook, a company that has only recently started to pick up big video traffic.