Facebook Is Coming To Your TV

    Facebook is developing a video-focused app for set-top boxes like the Apple TV, the Wall Street Journal reported on January 31, as the social network looks to bolster its video advertising revenue by giving customers a new way to stream video to the big screen.
    “A lot of people, when they’re watching video on News Feed during the day, will save it for later because they don’t have time to watch that three-minute video,” one journalist said. “Now it’s easy to go on your TV if you want to do that at night."

    Facebook users were watching more than 100 million hours of video every day in early 2016, and Facebook wants even more. The company is in conversation with video creators to license content and is pushing some of its publishing partners to create longer videos in an effort to get more TV-style content onto the platform.
    All of those long-form videos would, presumably, be available on the new TV app.
    What’s unclear is how much appetite users — and advertisers — will have for a standalone video app. Facebook spent the better part of 2016 testing a dedicated video tab inside its app before finally pushing it out in December, and it’s not clear why the test took so long. The company has also tinkered with a video-only feed that included a revenue split with creators.
But while the company has had no problems getting video content, it’s hasn’t yet figured out how to make serious money from those videos. Facebook has been competing for TV ad dollars for years, and Zuckerberg is against pre-roll ads, an industry norm. The company is just now planning to test mid-roll video ads, but that’s not available.
    A set-top box app should give Facebook and its partners more opportunities to turn video views into ad dollars. That’s the theory. The new app won’t include ads “at this time,” according to a company spokesperson.
    As part of new features for videos on their app, the volume will automatically come on. You can now also scroll through your news feed while watching videos in a small box on the app.