Autoplay Videos Survey: New Ads Could Impact Facebook Users

Social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram have employed the use of videos that play automatically when users scroll over them on the site or app. Now, Facebook is beginning to use these autoplay videos for advertising purposes. What do consumers think about autoplay video ads? Are they effective or just more of a distraction?

Autoplay Videos

In Ask Your Target Market’s latest survey, 49% of respondents said they don’t like videos that play automatically on sites like Facebook and Instagram. Just 14% said they like these autoplay videos. 23% said they have no opinion either way. And 15% said they’ve never noticed autoplay videos on these sites.

Autoplay Ads

But these videos can also be used as ads. 54% of respondents said they often see autoplay videos used as ads on websites. 23% said they’ve seen these ads once or twice. And another 23% said they’ve never seen autoplay videos used as ads. In general, just 8% of those who have seen autoplay videos used as ads said they can be very effective. 25% said they can be somewhat effective. 41% said they don’t think autoplay video ads are very effective. And 26% said they are not effective at all.

Facebook Users

So the majority of people who have experienced these ads don’t consider them to work very well. But are they actually detrimental to the websites hosting them? 63% said they think autoplay video ads are disruptive to the actual website content. 32% said these ads can sometimes disrupt the website content. And just 5% said they don’t think autoplay video ads disrupt the website experience.More specifically, just 18% of Facebook users said they would definitely continue using the site if it implemented autoplay video ads. 39% said they might not use Facebook as often if the site starts including autoplay video ads. 22% said they would probably not use it anymore. 10% said they would definitely not use it anymore. And 12% said they don’t use Facebook at all. You can view the complete survey results in the widget below and be sure to click “Open Full Report” to take advantage of all the chart and filter options.Photo Credit: Howard video chats with Nancy White about social media from FlickrWhat do you want to know? If you need some consumer insights on a particular topic, let us know in the comments below and we’ll consider it for an upcoming survey post.

Results were collected on March 17 via AYTM’s online survey panel.