Facebook, the social networking giant, has recently been highly active and dedicated towards expanding into developing countries with limited or slow online access. Be it its controversial Internet.org, or its rigorous foray into advertising.
The Creative Accelerator program, which was launched by the network in March, has attracted various brands like Nestle and Coca Cola to advertise in developing countries. This resulted in a boosted ad revenue of the company, the company stated on Wednesday. The aim of the program is to allow the advertisers to create “visual brand stories” for a wide variety of mobile devices and connection types. This requires photos and videos to load quickly and play smoothly, even in places where network quality isn’t robust.
Facebook stated that the results have been promising The company cited a recent photo ad campaign for Coke in Kenya. The result was a ad recall increase by 18 percent compared to similar campaigns. In India, Nestle’s “Theatre in a Cup” campaign increased awareness by 9 percent, among 125 million Facebook users.
Facebook has been highly focused on extending its arms into developing countries in Africa, South America and Asia. Facebook Lite, introduced earlier this month, was also an effort towards the same, allowing users with low end smartphones or bad connectivity to use Facebook better. It has other ambitions too including a flying drone technological innovation for increasing network coverage.
According to Facebook, more than 1 billion people use Facebook from a mobile device at least once a month, which is a 24 percent increase from last year. Also, the company claims that 73 percent of its $3.32 billion revenue in the first quarter from ads came from ads shown on a mobile device. By 2019, nearly 90 percent of its users will regularly access it via a mobile device, according to eMarker estimates.
Moreover, 90 percent of people who return to Facebook in countries such as India, the United Kingdom and Indonesia do so through mobile, the company said. Similar routines are followed in the Middle East, Africa and Brazil by more than 85 percent people.
Facebook claims that part of the attraction is the ability to watch videos including ads.
According to the social giant, the highest consumers of videos are the people from the Middle East.
