In August last year Facebook announced that they would be launching their video on demand service called Facebook Watch. It was made to compete with YouTube but also provide creatives with yet another platform on which to share their content and earn from it.
On 10 August 2017 Facebook Watch became available in the US only and the social media giant promised to roll it out to the rest of the world progressively. It has been over a year since it was announced and now, Facebook Watch has reached Uganda. If you have recently updated your Facebook phone app, you will notice that there is a new icon of what looks like a TV. Tap that icon and it will take you to a string of videos that you can watch one after another. (You can check your Facebook, I will wait.)
So what is Facebook Watch and why is it even important? Well According to Facebook, with the new Facebook Watch they intend to do a couple of things;
- Create more room for creatives to express themselves with short form videos as well as Long form TV like series.
- Get more people to spend time on Facebook
- Make more money for the platform.
With Facebook Watch, the viewers will be shown an advert in the middle of the video (after about 20 seconds). The ads are how Facebook can monetize the Watch feature and the revenue from the ads will be shared between Facebook and the content creators with the creator getting 55% of the revenue while Facebook keeps 45%.
Facebook will also be investing in some of it’s content partners by providing funding to create the videos. The social media giant is willing to spend from $20,000 to $70,000 for short form videos and between $250,000 to over $1 million for the TV like series on the platform.
Elit 