Facebook expands ways to monetise video content

Patrick Walker, Facebook’s Director of Media Partnerships, EMEA, has delivered a Keynote at the VidCon event in London, where he presented the social network’s ‘Creator Strategy’ following the launch of Watch in August 2018.

Walker talked about how Facebook is developing social video experiences that encourage interaction between fans and creators, as well as building tools to support and encourage their growing businesses.

Walker laid out three tentpole components that will be prioritised over 2019, and provided updates that support the commencement of this strategy across the region:

• Unleashing Creativity: Giving Facebook creators the ability to unleash their creativity with more interactive, two-way video experiences on Watch
• Engaging Community: Providing creators will tools that create more participatory experiences around videos – continuing the conversation beyond video when further engaging their fandom
• Building Business: Setting creators up for success & providing support and incentives that help Creators easily manage their brand and make money doing what they love.

To kick-start this strategy in Europe, Facebook has announced the expansion of two new ways for creators to monetise content on Facebook in EMEA:

• Facebook is Expanding its Fan Subscriptions test to five countries throughout Europe: UK, Spain, Germany and Portugal. Fan Subscriptions allows people to support the creators they love with a small monthly recurring payment, in exchange for special rewards or exclusive content.
• Facebook is also Making Brand Collabs Manager available to countries in Europe, starting with the UK and Germany. Brand Collabs Manager enables advertisers or brands to find and collaborate with creators for Facebook branded content opportunities.

Meanwhile, following the initial roll-out of video Ad Breaks in November 2018, Facebook reports they are now available in 41 countries around the world – with the number of Pages actively using ad breaks tripling since August, when rollout began. In addition, among Pages actively using ad breaks in EMEA, more than 40 per cent of videos with an ad break are in Arabic, French, German, Italian, or Spanish language – underscoring the global nature of the programme.