Facebook buys video ad firm LiveRail
Facebook has bought online video advertising platform LiveRail for a reported $500m (£292m), the Daily Telegraph reports.
The Telegraph says that the San Francisco-based company’s technology automatically pairs video ads with the videos that appear on many websites, such as the sites for Major League Baseball, ABC and A&E Networks.
Online video advertising is forecast to grow rapidly in the next few years.
“More relevant ads will be more interesting and engaging to people watching online video, and more effective for marketers too,” Brian Boland, vice president of ads product marketing and atlas at Facebook, said in a blogpost.
“Publishers will benefit as well, because more relevant ads will help them make the most out of every opportunity they have to show an ad.”
According to LiveRail, it delivers more than seven billion video ads a month.
Facebook has come under fire this week over an experiment in which it manipulated users’ news feeds to study the effect it had on moods.
