Facebook is putting ads in the middle of videos

In a bid to increase revenues for publishers posting video on its platform, Facebook is introducing ads in the middle of on-demand content, while expanding availability of "mid-roll" ads for live videos. Facebook will start testing the new format with a select set of U.S. publishers who will earn 55% of the ad revenue, with the social network pocketing 45%.

According to Recode, ads can be inserted once an on-demand video crosses 20 seconds in runtime, and each ad break must be two minutes apart. Facebook has also announced that pages or profiles that have 2,000 followers or more — and those that have reached 300 or more concurrent viewers for a live video — will be eligible to roll out ad breaks:

• Pages or profiles in the U.S. can qualify to test ad breaks if they have 2,000 or more followers and have reached 300 or more concurrent viewers in a recent live video.
• You can take ad breaks during any live video reaching 300 or more concurrent viewers by tapping on the $ icon in the Live composer window.
• You can take your first ad break after having been live for at least 4 minutes. You can take additional ad breaks after a minimum of 5 minutes between each break.
• Each ad break lasts up to 20 seconds.

Facebook's decision to split ad revenue with publishers will incentivize publishers to post more video on its platform. The social network announced last year that over 100 million hours of videos are watched every single day, and that number has likely skyrocketed after Facebook made it easier for everyone to broadcast live video.

What this means is that if you like to consume a lot of video on Facebook, you'll have to sit through ads.