The subsidiary of the Meta group seeks to counter Tiktok, which is gradually eating away at its market, by pushing its own short videos.
Many social networks want to invest in the vein of ultra-short videos dominated by the Chinese application TikTok. Facebook is the latest network to enter the race. Its founder, Mark Zuckerberg, announced on Tuesday February 22 the arrival on the platform of “Facebook Reels”.
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Originally, the “Reelsare a format copied from TikTok and developed for Instagram, another branch of the Meta Group. Although popular, Reels have one major flaw: they don’t make Meta much money. “Reels is less monetized than Stories or Instagram’s News Feed“, admitted a few weeks ago Sheryl Sandberg, Meta’s director of operations. A disadvantage that the group hopes to solve thanks to several levers for the moment limited to the United States, Canada and Mexico.
For example, creators will be able to implement banner ads in their video “appearing as a semi-transparent overlay”, or sticker ads, “static advertising images that can be placed by a Creator at any location” of the video.
“These ads with minimal interruptions allow creators to pocket a portion of the revenue generated“, underlines the company in a press release. Meta takes the opportunity to announce that videos previously limited to 15 seconds will now be able to last up to one minute – like on TikTok.
TikTok on the radar
This investment of Facebook in the Reels is not insignificant. The group unscrewed on the stock market in early February when it announced its quarterly results. Among the reasons for this stall, a loss of speed against its competitors. Mark Zuckerberg himself went so far as to cite the ByteDance subsidiary as his biggest rival:People have plenty of choices to fill their free time and TikTok is growing fast“.
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Like Facebook, other social networks have bet on short videos to stay in the race. Youtube invested $100 million to support the creators of Shorts, while Reddit bought Dubsmash a year ago to develop its in-house format. Initiatives that do not seem to challenge the hegemony of their competitor.