Facebook will now allow advertisers to place mid-roll ads while streaming longer format videos, the company announced in its blog post. These mid-roll ads slots can be purchased on videos on news feeds and on the Audience Network, the company's ad networks which can extend to other apps as well. Note that Facebook had mentioned that it has maxed out how many ads it can squeeze into people’s news feeds, and as a result, were looking monetize their other properties. One of the solutions was that Facebook would create an ecosystem for long-form video and will be looking to partner with content providers. The company last week launched a platform Watch, where it surfaces original video series/shows from a wide range of publishers and content creators. This makes video streaming on Facebook more closer to TV television. It added that on both Facebook and Audience Network, more than 70% of video ads up to 15 seconds in length are watched to completion. Meanwhile, advertisers like Innocent Drinks, TD Bank, Warner Bros Germany and Universal Music UK have run campaigns delivering exclusively in-stream video ads on Audience Network. Other monetization plans Instagram: Facebook has started to inject ad breaks in Instagram Stories as well. Instagram Stories now has more than 200 million daily active users while WhatsApp Status has more than 175 million daily active users. Meanwhile, Instagram is also looking at influencer marketing to shore up its ad revenues. Messenger and WhatsApp: CEO Mark Zuckerberg Zuckerberg detailed on how Facebook would be monetizing its Messenger and WhatsApp applications.…
