The publishing community that helped promote Facebook Live has been tapped again, this time to help the live streaming service find out if ad breaks built into broadcasts can drive revenue, Advertising Age reports.
The biggest challenge that the service may face: Facebook Live launched in January and gained widespread attention in July after a Minnesota woman live-cast the immediate aftermath of the police shooting of her boyfriend, Philando Castile, during a traffic stop. Castile sat slumped in the front seat, unattended, while the woman’s 4-year-old daughter offered soothing words from the back seat. No advertiser wants an ad for their brand to pop up in the middle of that feed.
Some advertisers already have opted out of the ad service, an unnamed source told Advertising Age. The experiment will place ad spots already promoted on Facebook at the five-minute mark in live video feeds broadcast by select publishing partners. Publishers will be able to control the categories of advertisers who can place spots in their livestream, and they will be able to turn off ads altogether during select broadcasts. Facebook will not immediately share revenue with media partners.
The social platform has invested heavily in its video capabilities and now is working to capture revenue from video content. “We’re particularly pleased with our progress in video as we move towards a world where video is at the heart of all our services,” Mark Zuckerberg said in a statement in July.
The company pulled in $6.2 billion in advertising revenue in the three months ended June 30 this year, up 63 percent from the same period last year, according to its most recent financial statement. Mobile advertising revenue represented 84 percent of that total.