Facebook will give brands two lines of captions free on videos, allowing them to use the silent autoplay feature to convey messaging.
The move, which starts today in the US, is meant to keep users more engaged as they scroll through the feed, with internal data from Facebook saying the captioning boosted view time by 12%, according to reports from Adweek.
Facebook ad products marketing director Graham Mudd says it will allow brands to insert their messages into content and grab users before they move on.
Facebook has spent the last 12 months bolsters bolstering its video capabilities for brands, after it shifted its view to be a video platform ‘front and foremost’.
However one of its key challenges has been getting brands to use bespoke creative rather than repurposing television commercials. The captioning feature could be one way to get brands to think about how to use creative that best suits the medium.
At the end of 2014 Facebook revealed that a third of all minutes spent on mobile are spent on Facebook platforms, according to Nielsen’s fledgling mobile measurement platform.
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