When Facebook launched its Premium Video Ads offering in the UK on 26 August, the very first campaign came from partner Comparethemarket.com, supporting a wider TV campaign centred around its meerkat characters.

The advertiser had paid to reach 5.6m of Facebook’s 26m UK daily active users within a 24-hour period, but actually reached 9.7m, totalling over 14m impressions and 5.2m video views (lasting three seconds or more). Of these views, 90 per cent came from mobile.

Nielsen data showed a 13 percentage point lift in ad recall following the campaign, at 23 per cent from a 10 per cent baseline.

“The objective of this phase of our overarching Africa & Oleg narrative was to get as many people aware of the Limited Edition Oleg toy,” said Gareth Jones, associate director of marketing at Comparethemarket.com. “We wanted to build affection for our new cute meerpup and drive desire for the toy.

“To do this, we needed to generate increased awareness – but specifically recall relating to Oleg – and at scale. We achieved both through the Facebook activity. Premium Video ads proved to be a lovely blend of creativity – enabling us to tell a more immersive story about baby Oleg – and media effectiveness. Most importantly, we have been able to build a closer relationship with people on Facebook through the use of more relevant messaging, targeting and data.”