Facebook Testing Autoplay Videos In Mobile

Facebook said Thursday it has begun testing autoplay videos in the mobile news feed with a small set of U.S. users. When someone scrolls through their mobile news feed and sees a video from a friend or the page of a musician or band, it will play automatically.

The sound will only come on when a user taps the video, and users can scroll past it if they don’t want to watch. While videos are initially limited to individuals (including celebrities), musicians and bands, Facebook’s Kelly Mayes said in a blog post the social network will “continue to explore how to bring this feature to marketers in the future."

Facebook appears to be testing the waters of its long-rumored rollout of autoplay video advertising. The company pushed back the planned October launch of video ads without setting a new target date, according to a recent Ad Age report, citing sources familiar with the matter. Facebook plans to charge $1 million to $2.4 million for the targeted 15-second spots.

But the initiative has been delayed a few times over the last year, partly as a result of marketer concerns about a user backlash to the autoplay video ads. Testing autoplay videos content within posts would give Facebook a means of gauging reaction before formally introducing video advertising.

Facebook said people would begin to see the autoplay videos in the coming weeks, but did not provide a timetable for when the new feature would roll out to all brand pages.

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