Facebook to include ads in live videos, says will share revenue with broadcasters

Broadcasters may or may not choose to include ads in their videos, but if they do, viewers cannot skip the ad.

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Facebook was mulling over making its live-feature even more interesting by monetising it since a long time now. At last, the company has announced that it will roll out the paid live broadcasting feature to the public.

Although, by public it doesn't mean the feature will be available to everyone. To get this going, one user needs to meet some criteria. First he/she must have more than 2,000 followers and at the same time must rope in at least 300 viewers on one of their broadcasts. All the social bees, who meet these criteria, will be eligible for paid live broadcasting service of Facebook and will be given a sign-up notification. This whole new process is in a beta stage right now.

Broadcasters will be able to see a 'dollar' ($) icon whenever they hit the LIVE button on Facebook and if that icon is clicked, an ad will be played. Viewers, who are watching the broadcast, will then see a counter on their screens when the ad will finish. Once the ad is done, viewers will return back to the live broadcast and the video uploader will also resume as usual.

Broadcasters can also choose not to have the ads included in their video by not clicking that dollar icon. But if they do, viewers will not be able to skip the ads.

This new Facebook feature affects two consumer categories. Viewers now will have to bear with ads even on Facebook videos and the video uploaders or broadcasters will earn a share in Facebook's revenue.

However, the exact profit sharing system has not been clarified yet,. Moreover, Facebook hasn't really announced how much the uploader will earn. They have only informed that broadcasters will "earn a share" from the ad revenue.

As a matter of fact, YouTube shares 55 per cent of its ad revenue with the video uploader. Although, it doesn't mean that it will be the same in the case of Facebook, but there is a good chance of it being same or more than that as bothe are rival companies.

This article was first published on February 28, 2017
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