Facebook rolls out new monetisation policies for short video content

Menlo Park, California headquartered technology giant Facebook on Thursday announced additional monetisation avenues for content creators as it attempts to recreate TikTok’s success in the short video content space. 

Facebook, in a company blog, said it will allow content creators to monetise short format videos and place sticker ads in stories.  

Creators can use in-stream ads to monetize their content on meeting certain viewership benchmarks. The company also expanded in-stream ads for Facebook Live, a feature that allows users to livestream.    

Under the new rollout, creators will no longer be required to meet the three-minute-long video benchmark. This will benefit short format video creators, especially those who rely on Live.  In India, this directly targets creators who have been dependent on other apps after the ban on TikTok in June 2020.  

Creators with six lakh total minutes of viewed video content in the last 60 days and five or more active video uploads can avail of this channel of monetisation, Facebook said. 

The social networking giant is also expanding its paid online events to 24 new countries. The paid online event feature, which began in August 2020, is already live in 20 countries including India.  

Like TikTok, Facebook also introduced audience engagement through its Stars programme, which allows audiences to gift redeemable stickers to content creators. In the blog post, Facebook said that Stars equivalent to nearly $10 million were sent to video and gaming content creators.

“Today we’re announcing that Facebook is investing $7 million over the next few months in consumer education and adoption via free Stars,” the post said.  

“During certain Star-enabled livestreams, some people will see an offer to claim free Stars that they can send at their discretion to their Favorite content creators to boost their visibility and connection with the creator and add to the creators’ earnings,” it added.  

In a push towards increasing short-video format content on Facebook, the company recently announced that it will recommend public reels of content creators from Instagram to users on Facebook. This is in addition to its short video feature on the Facebook platform which has been live since August 2020. 

According to numbers disclosed by the government of India, Facebook has close to 410 million users in the country, making it a key market for the company.