Unskippable Adverts Could Soon be Introduced to Facebook Stories

Facebook is planning to introduce unskippable adverts to its Stories.

The company reported that Facebook Stories and Messenger Stories have a combined 220 million daily users. It’s projected that there will be more people sharing on Stories than on news feeds at some point in 2019.

The shift to Stories, and resulting loss of revenue, is one of the reasons that Facebook had such a bad Q2. The quarter saw the share price drop by over $120 billion.

Facebook, therefore, is working on ways to optimise the advertising space to bring in as much revenue as possible.

TechCrunch reports that Facebook’s COO admitted they’re still not completely sure on the best way to produce adverts. Sheryl Sandberg said: “The question is, will this monetize at the same rate as News Feed? And we honestly don’t know.”

The issue is consumers are skipping through adverts too quickly. Sponsors are struggling to make the first second of adverts so eye-catching that it makes the audience stop and watch.

Introducing unskippable adverts could be controversial, however. There is a possibility that it will upset and frustrate users, forcing them towards other products.

Snapchat has recently been testing unskippable, six-second adverts. However, they are only displayed in Snapchat Shows, not when viewing a friend’s update. This could give Snapchat an edge over Facebook.

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