With a sense of inevitability Facebook has finally announced that premium video adverts are coming to the platform for a ‘select’ band of advertisers. Users will be presented with a 15 second clip, on mute, that can be scrolled past to ignore or enlarged to add sound. In a web environment that is dominated by high-intensity ads with increasingly intrusive tactics Facebook’s proposals seem relatively unobtrusive and likely won’t have you losing too much time between all the heart-wrenching viral videos and pictures of cats. Interestingly the ads will be bought and measured in the way TV ads are, rather than adopting a new basis for the platform.

Here come the videos! 
(credit: cnet)


Meanwhile Facebook head honcho Mark Zuckerburg is making phone calls to the most powerful man on the planet, American president Barack Obama. Zuckerberg argued the American government should be presenting the internet as one of its greatest assets, rather than existing as its greatest threat. As he explained “I've been so confused and frustrated by the repeated reports of the behavior of the US government. When our engineers work tirelessly to improve security, we imagine we're protecting you against criminals, not our own government. The US government should be the champion for the internet, not a threat. They need to be much more transparent about what they're doing, or otherwise people will believe the worst. I've called President Obama to express my frustration over the damage the government is creating for all of our future. Unfortunately, it seems like it will take a very long time for true full reform.”
Wrapping up the story for all things big under the Facebook banner, is that its 715 million dollar purchase, Instagram has signed its first ad deal. Starting as they mean to go on Instagram have agreed a contract with the not inconsiderable might of Omnicon. The recent $100 million deal has already attracted some positive discussion, with Forbes offering these four reasons for the ad deal being a promising one. Instagram has, perhaps wisely, chosen the Twitter route of having ad content fit in just as a regular tweet would in a stream that remains largely coherent.
All these events against the backdrop of a booming stock and a muted deviation from their “move fast and break stuff” mantra makes for blue skies over the land of Facebook. It seems as Facebook is maturing, it’s growing its advertising options sympathetically for both the users and the agencies.