Facebook Begins Short-Form Video Monetization

Facebook has announced that it’s opening up new ways to let content creators monetise their content on its platform.

The main changes are to short-form videos, which content creators will now be able to monetise, and the testing of sticker ads in Stories. It’s also going to increase the number of creators that are allowed to monetise their content after the successes it saw last year.

According to the social media firm, from 2019 to 2020, those earning $10,000 per month grew by 88% and those earning $1,000 per month grew by 94%. With the pandemic hitting people’s finances and likely to continue doing so for the coming years, Facebook’s expansion of monetisation services will no doubt act as a lifeline for many people.

Before today’s update, ads were only available on three-minute or longer videos and start playing 45 seconds in. Now, videos as short as one minute can play an ad halfway through. Facebook says that these ads will be “minimally interruptive”.

Facebook said it’s also going to assemble a small group of content creators to test sticker ads in Stories. As stickers, they will sit on the user’s screen without breaking the Story that you’re watching; and if used well shouldn’t be disruptive.

While the test groups will be small in the coming weeks, it wants to expand soon to more creators. Once Facebook is happy with this ad format, it plans to bring it to short-form videos on Facebook too.

A dialog box on Facebook letting users claim free Stars
In addition to short-form video monetisation, Facebook also announced improvements to Stars that followers can send to content creators.

Over the last six month, six billion stars have been sent which works out to around $60 million being added to creators’ earning. To boost knowledge of Stars, Facebook will be offering followers free Stars which they can send to creators; the firm is spending $7 million on the initiative.

To learn more about the different monetisation options available, you should head over to Creator Studio. It will let you know the eligibility criteria for all of the different options available.