Facebook is going to start showing ads in the middle of its videos and sharing the money with publishers

Facebook wants to show more advertisements to people who watch its videos and start making money for the people who supply it with those videos. Industry sources say the social network is going to start testing a new “mid-roll” ad format, which will give video publishers the chance to insert ads into their clips after people have watched them for at least 20 seconds. For now, Facebook will sell the ads and share the revenue with publishers, giving them 55 percent of all sales. That’s the same split offered by YouTube, which dominates the online video ad business. If the new ads take off, they could represent the first chance many video publishers have had to make real money from the stuff they’ve been running on Facebook.