Facebook is set to expand its video advertising service to the UK as well as in Brazil and five other countries it has been revealed.
The visual ads have been trialled over the past few months in the US, and with the recent launch of advanced video metrics, the social media giant has now confirmed it will bring 
Premium Video Ads to its UK audience to enhance its social media marketing offering.
The other countries set to get the new videos Australia, Brazil, Canada, France, Germany and Japan.
On the Facebook for business blog, it said: “With Premium Video Ads, brands now have another way of engaging people on Facebook with compelling video experiences. We’ll roll out Premium Video Ads slowly and monitor how people interact with them.”
The 15-second clips start playing automatically without sound when the video appears on a user’s screen and will stop as a viewer scrolls past. A user can then tap on the video to expand it full screen and only then will the video play with sound.
As with the US, the videos are rolling out slowly as the social media giant tries to be as unintrusive with the introduction of its new videos as possible.
The ads themselves are reported to cost anything between $1m and $2.5m in the US, with a similar figure expected here in the UK.
With so much money invested in the video ads, Facebook has devised a stringent vetting process for them. Working alongside a firm called Ace Metrix, it checks them for creative quality and ‘watchability’ before the ad finally makes it onto the social media site.
Consequently, the vast majority of video ads across the new international market are not expected to appear on Facebook until September.
A Facebook spokesman has suggested some ads may begin airing in time for the World Cup however, as long as they meet the necessary quality standards.
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