Facebook Videos Will Reportedly Have Ads Soon

Facebook may soon show ads in the middle of videos you are watching, according to a Recode report.

The social media platform will start testing a new “mid-roll” ad format, that will run in the middle of videos after at least 20 seconds into the clips, sources told Recode.

Facebook would sells the ads and share the revenue with publishers, giving them 55 percent of total sales, the same number offered by YouTube. If the testing shows the ads are successful, it could be the first time video publishers will make money from the content they run on the social platform.

However, there’s a catch for video creators. The ads will appear in videos that run for 90 seconds, which means publishers need to create content that will go on for a while and keep audiences engaged in order to make money.

Last year, Facebook began testing mid-roll ads in live videos, and last fall Facebook VP Dan Rose, who runs the platform’s content operations, told Poynter he expected to talk about expanding the mid-roll ads from those in live videos to more clip formats “early next year.”

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has forbidden ads that begin before videos, like those in videos shown on Twitter, which means publishers can’t make money off of their content. Not making revenue off of clips has discouraged publishers, like sports leagues, from uploading videos on Facebook. The new ads also come after BuzzFeed executives complained to the platform that they weren’t making enough money from videos posted to Facebook, especially from food clips created by BuzzFeed’s Tasty division, sources told Recode.