First Look: See Facebook’s 360-Degree Video Ads For AT&T, Samsung & Others

Facebook tests 360-degree video ads with selected brands and gives people the ability to see the format on iPhones and iPads.

Martin Beck on November 12, 2015

Facebook isn’t resting on its 8-billion-video-views-a-day laurels.

The next step is 360-degree video, and today the company announced several updates that highlight its push to introduce more of the immersive video format into the News Feed.

Of most interest to marketers is the testing of the first ads using the virtual-reality-like format with a handful of brands, including AT&T, Samsung and Walt Disney World. We’ve embedded the ads below.

Facebook pointed to more publishers using 360-degree video, including ABC News, BuzzFeed, Frontline and Nickelodeon. Facebook has also launched a microsite to give brands and video creators help in producing 360 video. The site features best-practice advice from VR experts Chris Milk and Aaron Koplin.

For Page admins, Facebook has added 360 video control settings within the uploading interface. Page owners will now be able to edit the initial camera position and vertical field of view before uploading their 360 videos.

Starting today, 360-degree videos will be viewable on iPhones and iPads, after the user updates the iOS app. At launch in September, Facebook’s 360-degree video was only visible on desktop and Android. For a full immersive experience, the videos are also now viewable on Samsung VR Gear devices.

Such advances will give people more reasons to interact with the format. And Facebook is hoping to encourage more people to shoot and post 360 video, working with camera makers such as Theta, Giroptic, IC Real Tech and 360 Fly to create in-app “publish to Facebook” options. That should make it more likely that marketers without huge production budgets are able to try out the format.

For now, though, the publishers posting 360 video are all major enterprises. And Facebook is testing 360 video ads with a selected group.

“We continue to develop capabilities that allow marketers to tell deep and immersive stories through sight, sound and motion,” Facebook vice president of global marketing solutions Carolyn Everson said in an emailed statement. “We are excited to work with these fantastic partners to push the boundaries of what’s possible for marketing on Facebook.”

Here are the first 360-degree ads:

Corona

Nescafe

Nestle

AT&T

Samsung

Disney World

About The Author

Martin Beck

Martin Beck is Third Door Media’s Social Media Reporter, covering the latest news for Marketing Land and Search Engine Land. He spent 24 years with the Los Angeles Times, serving as social media and reader engagement editor from 2010-2014. A graduate of UC Irvine and the University of Missouri journalism school, Beck started his career at the Times as a sportswriter and copy editor. Follow Martin on Twitter (@MartinBeck), Facebook and/or Google+.