FACEBOOK ATTACKS TV.
Facebook is coming to your TV.
Facebook is the world’s largest social network and announced on Tuesday that it is ready to release a standalone app for televisions soon. Facebook wants to run on every major digital device.
This new app would allow Facebook users to watch videos that have been uploaded by their friends and their liked pages on TV, and will also let users watch top live videos. Facebook also said that the user will be recommended videos based on the ones they’ve watched already. The Wall Street Journal was the first one to report the app’s existence.
The new app will be released in a few weeks for Apple TV, Amazon Fire TV and Samsung Smart TV and is planning to make the app compatible with latest televisions over time.
Facebook is working on funding its own scripted video shows.
Mark Zuckerberg recently described video as a “mega-trend” just like mobile phones contributed to Facebook’s early growth. $70 billion brand advertising budgets that are usually reserved for TV shows can come in, if it can get people to watch more videos.
"A lot of people when they’re watching video in news feed during the day will save it for later, because they don’t have time to watch," Facebook's VP of partnerships Dan Rose said on stage at the Code Media conference. "Now it's easy to watch on your TV if you want to do that. We want people to be able to consume content wherever they are – whether it’s on their phone, whether it’s on their computer — and TV is just another screen for that."
Rose added that although Facebook is building products for TV, it will remain a "mobile-first company." Currently, mobile ads make up about 84% of Facebook's total ad sales. Facebook’s total ad revenue is expected to reach $33.76 billion this year, according to forecasting firm eMarketer, making Facebook the largest ad seller after Google.
Most of large marketers' advertising dollars still typically go to television. Facebook has so far avoided pre-roll video ads, which are common on competing platforms like Google-owned YouTube. However, Facebook began testing "mid-roll" ads part way through live video streams last month.
Source : forbes.com, businessinsider.com
