To counter Youtube, Facebook launches monetisation tools for Indian video creators

Social media network Facebook is finding more ways to support and keep Indian publishers and creators on its platform. It has now introduced new monetisation tools like Ads Break and Brand Collabs Manager to offer an opportunity to earn for video creators in the country.

Ad breaks are short ads before or during qualifying videos, will help video creators earn revenue from the video ads shown to the viewer. Starting today, it will available for eligible partners in Hindi, Bengali, Tamil, Malayalam, and English. Whereas another tool, Brand Collabs Manager, will help brands find creators to collaborate with for branded content opportunities on Facebook. The feature will be available from next year in India.

In the last couple of years, Facebook has claimed to witness a surge in video consumption and it becoming one of the biggest drivers of engagement growth on the platform.

The biggest trend that Indian digital industry has witnessed consumer behaviour, is rapid growth in the adoption of video, said Paresh Rajwat, head of product for video, Facebook at its "Creator Day" event. Facebook has also emerged as a platform where professional content creators come to find an audience and also earn money, he added.

It also had some guidelines for content creators. In order to be eligible, ad breaks can only be included in long-form videos with a length of three minutes and more. The creator needs to have 30,000 one-minute views on videos in the last 60 days. And videos should be published through a page that has minimum 10k followers.

In India, Youtube is another platform that has been doing phenomenally well in terms of engaging consumers on its platform. In recent years, brands across categories have partnered with YouTube influencers to engage with young consumers and push sales.

According to an industry consensus, YouTube reaches 250 million MAUs whereas Facebook currently has 220 million.

Social networking platform has been constantly trying to win India users through its new features.

Two months ago, the social networking giant had tested a new feature Watch, a new platform for shows videos on Facebook. The feature personalized recommendations of live and recorded shows to consume. It lets users save video, follow channels and hide videos option from any broadcaster.

As per the Zenith report, the average time spent by Indian watching videos online has jumped to 52 minutes a day in 2018 from 2 minutes six years ago.