Dive Brief:

• Facebook has bought Fayteq, a small German startup with technology that tracks objects in video content and allows for the manipulating or removing those objects, the company confirmed to Business Insider. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. 
• The acquisition is significant given Facebook's emphasis on video as well as its ongoing push into virtual and augmented reality (VR and AR), Business Insider noted.
• The announcement is Facebook's third recent investment. It previously bought content rights company Source3 and earlier this month snapped up the AI chatbot startup Ozlo. The latter acquisition was viewed as a move to boost Facebook's virtual assistant M to get more on-par with competition like Apple's Siri and Amazon Alexa.  

Dive Insight:

As Facebook pivots focus to offering more video content — last week, it officially announced its TV-like premium video service Watch — building out more robust video editing capabilities for content creators and marketers is a smart move that might give it a competitive edge against rival platforms like YouTube. AR, in particular, appears to be Facebook's next big focus when it comes to providing tools for developers, and Fayteq's editing specialty fits squarely into those ambitions. 

Earlier this year, Facebook unveiled its Camera Effects Platform, which provides a suite of tools for artists, designers and developers to build AR apps for Facebook. The Fayteq acquisition might extend those AR integrations to video, and comes as yet another bid to put a dent in Snapchat, which has helped popularize AR in the mainstream through its virtual selfie and world lenses filters. Apple is yet another major tech player eyeing AR as a signifcant piece of is future business, especially on mobile, and also recently introduced an AR video editing app called Clips.

For marketers, AR technology and the ability to virtually edit video to easily remove or add objects is significant, opening up new horizons for demoing products and showing deeper product information in a more interactive, real-time way.