Facebook has decided to change the way it ranks videos in News Feed with more emphasis on longer videos. The focus on longer videos certainly comes as a tad surprise given that the attention span on social media is very low.

This is probably the reason why Facebook has specifically mentioned that only videos that are interesting enough to hold the attention span will be featured in its news feed. On the other hand, videos that fail to fulfill this critical requirement will stand no chance of making it to its news feed.    

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Facebook will use the traditional percent completion method to determine which videos are popular. The method gauges the percentage of each video watched by the viewers, directly signifying the popularity of the video.

According to a statement posted on Facebook's official blog post, the social media giant will also use other criteria including checking whether users turn on the sound, use full-screen, and activate the high-definition mode.    

However, the company has not set any minimum time limit to classify long videos.    

The decision to focus on long videos is a part of the company's boarder strategy to monetize advertisement revenues through video ads, a format that Google-owned YouTube has championed over the years.

This is also the reason why the social media company is set to introduce a "mid-roll" advertising format for videos. This advertising format will be used only for videos that are at least 90 seconds long.

As Facebook is running out of space on its main network to publish ads, it is now desperately searching for other avenues to boost its advertising revenues. Days back, the social media giant announced that it will start testing ads on its Messenger platform. However, for now the ads will be tested only in Australia and New Zealand.