Facebook Rolling Out Autoplaying Video Ads

facebook-appFrom the It’s A Terrible Idea Department, Facebook has announced that it has begun testing, and will likely implement an auto playing video advertisement. Don’t fret, audio will be turned off until you flick on the video.

From Facebook’s “newsroom”:

Now when you see a video in News Feed, it comes to life and starts playing. Videos initially play silently, and if you want you can tap to play with sound in full screen. Scroll past if you don’t want to watch.

I was going to go on a big diatribe about how stupid this is, but it’s probably perfect for the wider Facebook crowd. I mean, most probably couldn’t tell the difference between a paid news feed entry and an actual update from a page they really, actually like.

Photo Credit: SimonQ???? (via cc)

Joshua is the Content Marketing Manager at BuySellAds. He’s also the founder of Macgasm.net. And since all that doesn’t quite give him enough content to wrangle, he’s also a technology journalist in his spare time, with bylines at PCWorld, Macworld… Full Bio