Facebook adds new features to Slideshow ads

Paddle Pop

Last October Facebook launched slideshow, a lightweight video ad made from a series of still images, created to allow advertisers to use video-like ads in areas with slow connections.

Facebook has now introduced new features to slideshow, including:

• Text and music: advertisers can select text fonts, templates and colours to create a rich visual experience. They can also choose from audio tracks that reflect a range of different themes and will soon be able to upload their own audio tracks.
• Mobile: advertisers can now create slideshows on the go with their Android mobile device.
• Stock images: Slideshow is now fully integrated with Facebook's stock image database and the Pages Photo Library feature, so advertisers can choose from thousands of stock photos, reuse photos from their Pages Photo Library or upload new photos.
• Connection speeds: Advertisers can now easily turn videos into slideshows by uploading them into the slideshow tool, which will automatically select 10 image stills to use for building a slideshow. This can be combined with 2G targeting to simply and effectively deliver video creative to users on low bandwidth connections.

Examples of brands using the feature include Dettol in South Africa, which used an existing video asset and turned it into a slideshow through the new video to slideshow tool. They were able to show the video to more people on slower connections, said Jared Pillai, digital manager, Dettol.

Stance, a sock company that brings art and self-expression to socks, wanted to grab the attention of potential customers. However, they didn’t want to invest a lot of time or money into a new photo or film shoot. Stance took existing still images from their online product catalogue and created slideshow ads. They used different variations of slideshows for different audiences.

When comparing their new slideshows to photo link ads, they saw that their cost per acquisition decreased by 48%, the click-through rate increased 2.42 times and their return on ad spend increased by 1.48 times.

“Stance used slideshow across Facebook and Instagram to effectively increase sales. The campaign was a great partnership between the art and science of our brand,” added Brett Sirianni, director of social media, Stance.

Unilever has extended their TV ad to all connection speeds in emerging markets. Unilever’s Paddle Pop ice cream brand in Indonesia, for example, developed a TV ad that brought fun animation and a colourful story to life. When it came time to show the creative to mobile, they reused images from the TV ad to create made-for-mobile versions with slideshows, which are faster to load and five times lighter than the average video ad.

“We know that more than half the consumers we serve in Indonesia have trouble viewing video, since they... experience unreliable mobile data connections or low bandwidth. Facebook’s slideshow solution helps us create a simple, lightweight yet engaging mobile asset from our current video creative,” said Yenni Nathalia, brand manager, Paddle Pop.