Watch Out, YouTube! Facebook Wants Your Video Action
It was only a matter of time before Facebook figured out a way to make money from the videos that are played on their platform. As Fortune points out, before now, video creators didn’t have a way to make money on the Facebook platform. That all changes today, with Facebook’s new plan to monetize videos and share the revenue with creators. The revenue arrangement is the same as YouTube’s: 55 percent of the money earned from ads goes to the creator, and 45 percent goes to Facebook. So far, the program has a couple of dozen partners who have signed up, including the NBA, Fox Sports, Hearst, and Funny or Die.
Related: Facebook gaining ground on YouTube in video ads, report says
Prior to the new plan, Feed videos would only play mutely until the user clicked on them. Now, when users play a video on mobile, they will get a feed of “Suggested Videos.” It’s not until a few of these videos play, that the user will see an actual ad. And these ads, unlike Facebook’s autoplay videos, will play with the sound turned on.
In the past few weeks, the social media giant has tested the “Suggested Videos” product with a small number of iOS users. Today the test goes wider, and will eventually expand to include Android and desktop users.
Unlike YouTube, which gives content creators 55 percent of the revenue from the ads it plays before videos, Facebook will divvy up the 55 percent in revenue among multiple creators or partners. For example, if you watched a three-minute video from the NBA, and a two-minute video from Funny or Die, the 55 percent in ad revenue would be split proportionately between the NBA and Funny or Die.
Related: Will Facebook Kill the News Media or Save It?
Industry experts fully expect video—especially mobile video—to be a major source of revenue for Facebook in the future since users already deliver four billion videos views daily. The company made $3.3 billion in ad revenue in the first quarter of 2015, 73 percent of it from mobile ads alone. For now, Facebook says it is focused on shorter video formats, not long-form video formats like TV shows and movies.
To date, YouTube has been the only major player in user-posted video, but Facebook is stepping up its game. It just announced to advertisers the option to pay for video ads only after a video has played for 10 seconds. It’s a response to announcements that Snapchat and Twitter are rolling out video divisions too. In May, Spotify added video-streaming to its music-streaming app. And Hulu, Yahoo, and AOL are also pushing their video strategies.
For content providers, it’s a new way to play—and pay.
GOP Tax Cuts Getting Less Popular, Poll Finds
Friday marked the six-month anniversary of President Trump’s signing the Republican tax overhaul into law, and public opinion of the law is moving in the wrong direction for the GOP. A Monmouth University survey conducted earlier this month found that 34 percent of the public approves of the tax reform passed by Republicans late last year, while 41 percent disapprove. Approval has fallen by 6 points since late April and disapproval has slipped 3 points. The percentage of people who aren’t sure how they feel about the plan has risen from 16 percent in April to 24 percent this month.
Other findings from the poll of 806 U.S. adults:
- 19 percent approve of the job Congress is doing; 67 percent disapprove
- 40 percent say the country is heading in the right direction, up from 33 percent in April
- Democrats hold a 7-point edge in a generic House ballot
Special Tax Break Zones Defined for All 50 States
The U.S. Treasury has approved the final group of opportunity zones, which offer tax incentives for investments made in low-income areas. The zones were created by the tax law signed in December.
Bill Lucia of Route Fifty has some details: “Treasury says that nearly 35 million people live in the designated zones and that census tracts in the zones have an average poverty rate of about 32 percent based on figures from 2011 to 2015, compared to a rate of 17 percent for the average U.S. census tract.”
Click here to explore the dynamic map of the zones on the U.S. Treasury website.
Map of the Day: Affordable Care Act Premiums Since 2014
Axios breaks down how monthly premiums on benchmark Affordable Care Act policies have risen state by state since 2014. The average increase: $481.
Obamacare Repeal Would Lead to 17.1 Million More Uninsured in 2019: Study
A new analysis by the Urban Institute finds that if the Affordable Care Act were eliminated entirely, the number of uninsured would rise by 17.1 million — or 50 percent — in 2019. The study also found that federal spending would be reduced by almost $147 billion next year if the ACA were fully repealed.
Your Tax Dollars at Work
Mick Mulvaney has been running the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau since last November, and by all accounts the South Carolina conservative is none too happy with the agency charged with protecting citizens from fraud in the financial industry. The Hill recently wrote up “five ways Mulvaney is cracking down on his own agency,” and they include dropping cases against payday lenders, dismissing three advisory boards and an effort to rebrand the operation as the Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection — a move critics say is intended to deemphasize the consumer part of the agency’s mission.
Mulvaney recently scored a small victory on the last point, changing the sign in the agency’s building to the new initials. “The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau does not exist,” Mulvaney told Congress in April, and now he’s proven the point, at least when it comes to the sign in his lobby (h/t to Vox and thanks to Alan Zibel of Public Citizen for the photo, via Twitter).
