Facebook is bolstering efforts to secure ad spend from brands and agencies in emerging markets after tie-ups with advertisers such as Coca-Cola and Nestlé from earlier in the year sparked promising results.
It is the first update from the company’s Creative Accelerator program since it launched in March to help the social network monetise its users in high-growth markets such as India and South Africa. Given more than 70 per cent of its revenue is now mobile, Facebook wants to nail its advertising offering in those markets where the devices most commonly used are mobile phones.
This is where the Creative Accelerator initiative comes in. By establishing best practice guidelines for each market, the business can fashion a more robust offering for advertisers looking to reach people who are more likely to have a feature phone or older smartphones instead of newer devices.
In a blog post it hailed the performance of the first campaigns to flow from the scheme.
In Kenya, Coca-Cola launched a photo ad campaign that pushed location-based messages of happiness to people’s phones. Compared to the brand’s other social media campaigns in the country, Facebook claimed ad recall jumped 18 per cent.
Nestlé’s “Everyday’s Theatre in a Cup” brought together people in rural and urban areas in India using photo or video ads, that depended on their device and connection speed. Brand awareness off the back of the campaign rose nine per cent and purchase intent by five per cent compared to similar campaigns in the region, Facebook claimed.
The blog post goes on to suggest that the social network’s plan to encourage advertisers to shell out on its more premium video ads will extend to emerging markets.
More than 50 per cent of people on Facebook in the UK, Brazil, South Korea, Singapore, Israel and the UAE watch a video every day, the post reads, while in the Asia-Pacific they are spending more time creating and consuming videos, including ads. In just one year, it boasted that the number of video posts created per person on Facebook rose 75 per cent globally, and 52 per cent in Australia, 36 per cent in South Korea and 138 per cent in the United Arab Emirates.
Mondelez is another big spending advertiser that has cast its gaze to emerging markets. In February, the snacks maker announced plans to create more Facebook campaigns for basic phones after tests showed the devices could boost commercial metrics similarly to its smartphone efforts.
With Facebook already having built a formidable user base in developed markets, it is looking beyond to fuel secure future growth. Combined with a data-lite version of its app, the Creative Accelerator program will help propel this plan and try to build higher levels of retention within its eco-system.
