With its recent moves, Facebook has telegraphed its plan to move into long-form video by funding original programs, distributing them across multiple platforms, and prioritizing lengthier video content within its News Feed algorithm. During its most recent earnings call, however, the social media giant reminded investors that its “primary focus,” as far as video is concerned, is still short-form content.
“Over the longer term…people will experiment with longer forms of video as well as all kinds of different things,” said Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. In the present, however, short-form content will remain Facebook’s bread-and-butter. The social media site plans to pay producers in order to create clips that will “seed” its recently-launched video tab, thus matching the strategy it used when it was first promoting its Facebook Like platform last year.
As it builds up its video tab, Facebook is also working on its advertising infrastructure, which will allow content creators to generate revenue for themselves. The company is rumored to be favoring “mid-roll” ads that will be served up in the middle of its videos. “We need to be able to support that with a business model that we’re working on with ads,” said Facebook CFO David Wehner.
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Facebook’s most immediate goal, as far as its video is concerned, is to get users excited about the new video tab. As Zuckerberg noted, “The early trends are good.”
