Kingsley Nov 18, 2018 facebook
If you use Facebook, you would have surely come across ads that play in the middle of a video. They are called mid-roll ads. Coz they play in between the video. Chances of avoiding them are slim or impossible (as of now, coz nothing is impossible in software) as they reside in the server itself. Trying to block them would mean blocking the video itself. Now, these can be really annoying if you were watching an interesting video.
There was a way around ads in facebook using the 'facebook ad blocker' plugin in chrome, but sadly it no longer works since facebook launched the mid-roll ad campaign.
A small history about the ads for people who do not know the criteria and technical aspect of it.
1. Facebook ads showup in the video only if it is more than 1:30 mins long, and they start playing only after a minimum of 20 seconds
2. Unlike YouTube, Facebook does not support showing pre-roll (Before the video starts) ads. So, your video will never start with an ad.
3. Video ads pause if you go to the next tab or scroll your feed. They resume when you scroll back or come back to the tab.
Now there are different ways to avoid it.
1. By copying the video link and playing it in a separate tab. (has worked so far).
2. Playing another video in your feed and coming back to the video you were watching. (works sometimes).
There are also other ways in google which works sometimes.
Anyway, coming to the point of this post, there is a simpler way to avoid it. I happened to discover this and so I don't guarantee that it will work, but it works as of today (18-Nov-2018). It doesn't work in the facebook mobile app.
All you have to do is, click the next tab (or a new tab) whenever the 'Ad starting soon' timer appears. (shown below). You can click the next tab just a second before the timer times out. Then, wait for 1 second in the other tab (or a few more seconds till the timer times out) and come back to the facebook tab. And you would see that the timer is gone and your video continues to play.
If you know of any other way to bypass mid-roll ads in facebook, do comment below.
