Facebook Slashes Price Of Auto-Play Video Ads Before Official Roll Out

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FACEBOOK AUTO-PLAY VIDEO ADS DELAYED UNTIL SUMMER: Facebook may not rollout auto-play video ads until this summer, according to sources close to the company. Facebook began testing the new video ads with the fast food restaurant chain Subway in September 2013, but the social media giant has yet to give a firm date for when the program will officially launch. Subway's pilot campaign reached 88 million people and generated "millions" of clicks, according to the Wall Street Journal. Nonetheless, many Facebook users are not looking forward to auto-play video ads filling up their news feed. In a poll of 1,130 readers of the news site Mashable, 61% of respondents said they "hate" or "don't love" the idea of auto-play ads in their news feed.

The company initially planned to charge $1-2.5 million for the new ads, but is now said to have dropped the price to as low as $600,000 per day. For comparison, YouTube and Yahoo charge $400,000 and $450,000, respectively, for a similar video ad spot on their platforms. (Mashable)

QUOTE OF THE DAY: "I have no idea what this is about" - Viber CEO Talmon Marco vehemently denying rumors that Viber, a popular mobile messaging app, is set to be acquired by an instant messaging company in Asia (Reuters)

THE MISUNDERSTOOD CAREER OF A SOCIAL MEDIA MANAGER: As social media becomes increasingly more important to large brands for marketing, customer service, and other areas of business, social media managers are tasked with taking on new responsibilities within their organization. Digiday spoke with three social media managers at large brands to field anecdotes about the growing pains of this new, and often misunderstood profession. Here are a few excerpts:

"High-level VPs would come over and say I was messing around on the Internet too much. It was me and one other woman who had to manage 40 brands - that means over 117 Facebook pages. It was two people dedicated to that communication."

"Often people see it as this warm and fuzzy part of marketing, but in reality, it's a machine and a powerful revenue driver when it's given the proper attention and funding."

"My biggest problem with it as a career is that it tends to be sold to companies that don't really need it, and you get into this situation for creating a product for the client, then you are judged on analytics." (Digiday)

SECRET TAKING SECURITY SERIOUSLY: The Secret sharing app, which allows users to anonymously share messages, i.e. secrets, is launching a "bug bounty program" that rewards users for reporting security flaws in the app's software. The announcement of the program came shortly after a user identified a security vulnerability that exposed user email addresses. Facebook and a number of other consumer apps manage their own bug bounty program. (TechCrunch)

FUN FACT: "Google has executed more deals than any company in the world over the past three years …" Interestingly, Google has been making quite a few acquisitions in the field of artificial intelligence and machine learning recently which is a good indication of what types of projects Google is working on now. (Bloomberg)

YAHOO CONTINUES LOCATION EFFORTS: Yahoo is integrating restaurant reservation service OpenTable more deeply with search results. Now when users search for restaurants in their area, OpenTable will display information and reservation options in the right-rail of the search results page. Recently, Yahoo incorporated Yelp's local business listings and reviews into search results as well. Search advertising currently accounts for roughly one-third of Yahoo's revenues, so it's clear CEO Marissa Mayer wants to enhance its search business to help offset declining display ad revenue. (Re/code)

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