Lightweight Video Ads Pull Heavy Punches

Have you noticed a surge of video ads on the web? It seems that video ads have taken over many different sites from Facebook and YouTube to Forbes and Wall Street Journal. These video ads automatically play and they’ll get your attention from the sidebar, on a news feed, or smack dab front and center.

The pluses? Video ads are an excellent source of revenue for content producers. By generating consistent income from ads, these organizations are able to continue to provide you – the user or viewer – with quality service and information without having to charge subscription fees.

The minuses? Video ads can be especially intrusive and frustrating to the user’s experience. Depending on the user’s connection speed, the type of ad used and the code structure in place, a video can delay the loading process of desirable content and data or even cause serious browser performance issues.

Video ads that are struggling to play on a slow connection? Kill me now!

You can probably think of a situation where you were searching for information online, stumbled upon an interesting blog article, clicked the link, started reading and then poof! A video began to play…it’s a video ad, say from Best Buy. However, you are not interested in anything Best Buy related and simply wanted to continue reading the news article – a slight annoyance, perhaps. Eventually, you got back to your news article.

But what would happen if you were using someone else’s laptop with a very slow connection. This video ad might be your worst nightmare because it could put a stop to your web experience. With a slow connection, the browser will require more time than usual…the script may stop working or become unresponsive. Worse case scenario? The seemingly innocent 15-second video ad may pack too many punches and beat your web experience to a pulp.

Thanks video ad!

Certainly, this is not the advertiser’s purpose.

Facebook rises to the challenge with lightweight ads

Facebook realizes that advertisements are crucial to maintaining an ongoing revenue stream, but they’re also cognizant of the fact that the internet adoption rate is exploding in emerging markets.

Slideshow is a product of the social media empire’s Internet.org project – a humanitarian mission to deliver connectivity in emerging countries. Slideshow was created to provide the same benefits of the high definition video ads, but with lower bandwidth. Here, the benefits of Slideshow are twofold. Slideshow ads help businesses target and advertise those in emerging markets as well as deliver video content to people connecting to the Internet from dial-up connections, and older modems.

How does Slideshow work? Using Facebook’s ad management system, businesses can create a 15-second slideshow, which is made up of three to seven still images. The images can be uploaded from anywhere or can be uploaded from Facebook’s stock image library. The video is responsive too, as the images are resized for optimal presentation.

What’s the appeal, you ask? Slideshow is cheap. There’s no need for video production. No need to hire some fancy director who wears a beret. However, Slideshow is not free, but yet it is at a significantly lower price point than video. Moreover, Slideshow kind of looks and acts like a video ad. As you know, something that looks and acts different on the web is going to get some attention. Facebook says that Slideshow ads get more attention than banner ads or text ads. Plus, early testing showed that a “15-second slideshow can be up to 5x smaller in file size than a video of the same length (The Power of Video Now Available to More People in More Places, Facebook.com/business).

Implications of Slideshow’s recent success

Large, multinational companies, such as Coca-Cola, have recently tested the Slideshow format against static image advertisements. The results, according to Facebook, were impressive.

“Coke ran a Slideshow ad in Kenya and Nigeria to promote its show, Coke Studio Africa, using shots taken from video. According to Facebook, it reached 2 million people, twice the company’s original goal, and raised awareness of the ad by 10 percentage points in Kenya” (Facebook Debuts Video-Like ‘Slideshow’ Ad For Emerging Markets, Forbes.com).

Coca-Cola’s recent success may kickoff a multinational Slideshow bandwagon effect. Slideshow gives global companies the opportunity to reach millions, and potentially even billions of people for the first time.

Could Slideshow be the optimal alternative for video ads in the future? Although it’s primarily being showcased as an emerging market tool, Slideshow is available for Facebook advertisers and users around the world. Do you want to promote your page? Send people to your website? Increase engagement in your app? Then you may want to create a Slideshow ad. And yes, even if you are using the newest device, latest browser on the market, and have a blazing-fast internet connection.

Sources:
http://www.theverge.com/2015/10/29/9638660/facebook-slideshow-video-ads-emerging-markets
http://www.forbes.com/sites/roberthof/2015/10/29/facebook-debuts-video-like-slideshow-ad-for-emerging-markets/
http://newsroom.fb.com/news/2015/10/news-feed-fyi-building-for-all-connectivity/