Get Ready For the Worst Ads Ever to Hit Your Facebook Feed

Impact

The news: It's worse than you think: Facebook is getting video ads that automatically play in your browser.

WHAT? Please calm down.

NO. Yep. Facebook has announced that it will be selling video ads by the end of this week, thereby making this the worst social media Christmas ever. The switch to Facebook video advertising is expected to help it cash in on a $66.4 billion TV ad market.

The 15-second ads will begin showing up in your newsfeed by Thursday on both the web and smartphones (so if you have a slow one, there goes Facebook!) and will play automatically, although Facebook insists the sound will be off.

What is this, Yahoo! News? I feel your pain. But they're trying to make it seem painless. Facebook claims that on mobile devices, the ads will automatically download in the background when the device is connected to Wi-Fi, ensuring that users won't go over their data plans on their account. And they insist that "this format isn’t intended for every video ad or Page post video on Facebook; it meets specific needs for certain marketers with certain objectives."

It's not clear how much Facebook plans to charge advertisers, but executives told the Wall Street Journal in August that Facebook's pricing would be $2 million a day to let marketers hit up the entirety of adults age 18-54.

Why!? One answer only. Mobile advertising is worth a lot of money. Here's the estimate cost per 1,000 views for different kids of ads:

Image credit: Turn

Video ads were worth over $4 billion this year, and eMarketer projects it will grow to be $8 billion by the end of 2016. Facebook would be stupid not to cash in.

This sucks. What are you going to do, leave Facebook? Uh-huh.