On Tuesday,Facebook introduced Showcase, a new “premium” video advertising program. The company bundled three of its existing ad products into one:
- In-Stream Reserve
- In-Stream Reserve Categories
- Sponsorships
The point behind positioning Showcase as a premium video advertising program is to help advertisers reach younger audiences.
Even though the ad products found in Showcase aren’t anything new, it’s been reported by Facebook that almost 100 million US viewers watch In-Stream Reserve content on Watch, within the News Feed, as well as on Pages each month based on Facebook’s internal data. It was also found that, during the last three months, 43 percent of its US viewers who watch In-Stream Reserve eligible videos are between the ages of 18 and 34. This audience is much bigger when compared to Nielsen estimates (which is only 28 percent of the US TV-viewing audience between August and October of last year of the same age range group).
In-Stream Reserve ads must be purchased in advanced and at a fixed cost — the way of traditional TV buys. Ad placement is limited to “premium” video content with in-target audiences verified by Nielsen. The In-Stream Reserve Categories allow advertisers to choose ad placement based on relevant content verticals, including sports, fashion and beauty, entertainment, food and news.
Show Sponsorships offer Facebook video advertisers the opportunity to be the exclusive sponsor for Watch programs with U.S. viewers.