• by Jack Loechner , Staff Writer @mp_research, December 5, 2016

According to a report from Digiday by Max Willens, Platforms Reporter at Dividay, Facebook, in an attempt to drive mass adoption of Facebook Live, has turned to TV, becoming a major advertiser there in the process. The company launched the largest TV-advertising campaign in its history, airing over 20 different commercials more than 1,700 times.

Ads for Facebook Live have run during the 2016 World Series, as well as numerous NFL Sunday and nationally televised college football games. Facebook has spent an estimated $16.4 million, according to iSpot.tv, to vault itself into the top-70 biggest spending advertisers on TV over this period, more than the $14.1 million Facebook spent advertising on digital media through the first half of 2016, according to Kantar data, says the report.

The TV buy might be an expensive lever, but it’s hardly the only one Facebook has pulled to promote Live says the report. It invested $50 million in yearlong contracts with some 140 celebrities and publishers to produce Facebook Live content. It also quietly began testing ads that would allow brands and publishers to promote Live content in readers’ news feeds at the moment of the broadcast.

But Facebook is investing substantially at a time when Facebook and Instagram, which it also owns, are pushing hard to build audience for its video products. Facebook needs more people to go live not only because growing video consumption is the only way it can increase ad load, but also because it continues to feel heat from Snapchat, which was producing upwards of 10 billion video views per day this summer, despite having an audience barely a tenth the size of Facebook’s, observes Willens.

For the original report, please visit Digiday here.