Facebook Launches Lightweight Video Ads for Emerging Markets

Facebook Coke videoFacebook has launched Slideshow, a lightweight video ad format for use in emerging markets where smartphones and high-speed data connections arent necessarily the norm.

Facebook describes the ad as video, but its actually a series of still images. This creates a much smaller file size – according to Facebook, a 15-second slideshow is typically one fifth the size of a video the same length.

The ads were trialled by Coca-Cola in Kenya and Nigeria to promote their Coke Studio Africa show. The ads usedhigh-res screenshots from the video in tandem with some basic text. The ads reached 2m people and raised ad awareness by 10 points in Kenya.

“We recognise that our consumers may have constraints when accessing video content, hence the slideshow option by Facebook is spot-on in enabling us to still deliver impactful and quality content,” said Ahmed Rady, Coca-Cola Central, East and West Africa marketing director. “As such, we are excited to use the slideshow feature to deliver high quality content from Coke Studio Africa to our consumers on the continent.”

Slideshow is rolling out to Facebooks Power Editor and Ads Manager platform in the coming weeks.