Facebook Update 'Suggested Videos' Is Going To Bring More Advertisements To Your Feed

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg wasn't lying when he said video is the site's future. The social network has introduced a new mobile feature that will bring more video, and also more ads, to your screen.

Now, when clicking on a video in your mobile News Feed, a “Suggested Video” feed that takes up the entire phone screen can come up. Scroll down on the pop-up, and you will see additional video suggestions. These videos are chosen by an algorithm and will be related by topic or publisher.

But not every video will be original content from a Facebook friend or publisher a user chooses to like, or follow. While videos in these streams must be clicked on to begin playing, there will also be auto-play ads interspersed. This initiative introduces a new revenue model for publishers looking to cash in from video content published directly to the social network. “We’ve heard consistently from media companies and other video creators that if they were able to make money from their videos, they would publish more,” Facebook’s VP of partnerships Dan Rose told Variety.

Facebook’s advertising split, at least during this test, will be 55 percent to the publisher, reportedly the same split that YouTube grants its partners. The first content partners in this “suggested video” partnership includes Fox Sports, the NBA, Hearst magazines and Funny or Die, Re/code reports.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has been repeatedly pushing the importance and the future of video on his social network. The site introduced an embeddable video player in March, so content published directly on Facebook can be shared elsewhere similar to what you see with YouTube. Facebook has claimed to bring in 4 billion video views per day across the network.

The initiative also aligns with Facebook’s mobile push, as the test first will be available on Apple iPhones but will come to Android and desktop in the coming months, Re/code reports. The videos in this suggested feed are still horizontal, but Facebook is experimenting with vertical video as done on disappearing messaging app Snapchat. The new system will roll out as a test to a selected millions of Facebook's 1.4 billion users in the coming weeks, Variety reported.