Facebook’s launch of video ads is “imminent,” David...

Facebook’s launch of video ads is “imminent,” David Lawenda, head-U.S. global marketing solutions, told the Digital Entertainment World conference here in Los Angeles Tuesday. The company has been testing the “premium” video service, in which ads will play automatically as soon as they appear on screen in user news feeds, but without audio unless users opt to hear it. Facebook takes “user sentiment very seriously,” so it wanted to gauge member reactions ahead of the launch, said Lawenda. The company completed the second of three rounds of tests of video ads for the coming Summit Entertainment movie Divergent and, “so far, the results are very positive,” he said. Mobile engagement among Facebook users is “off the charts,” he said. Fifty percent of Facebook revenue is coming from mobile now, he said, predicting mobile adoption among users will continue at a “rapid” pace. International growth is “extremely important” for CBS Interactive, CEO Jim Lanzone said in another panel at the conference. The company has about 250 million users of its content in China alone, he said, calling international a “huge area of growth” for his company. There is, meanwhile, so much digital content available industrywide that viewers don’t have the time to view it all, he said. Viewers must narrow their viewing down to content they need to view and content that’s “super high quality,” making it crucial for companies to produce the highest-quality content possible, he said. Similarly, “you really have to” create an online service that’s “phenomenal” to gain any traction today, said Zander Lurie, executive vice president at Guggenheim Digital Media. CBS Interactive is monetizing online content at the same rate as TV content, Lanzone also said. But it’s important to make sure that it’s measured accurately, he said. The second DEW conference will be Feb. 10-12, 2015, said Mary Dolaher, CEO of IDG World Expo, which organized the conference with Digital Media Wire.