Facebook busts video advertising myths across EMEA
An interview with Facebook Measurement Marketing Manager Beth Antonelli on the educational video marketingcampaign Moskito Design helped launch to bust video advertising myths across the EMEA region.
What really counts for marketers when it comes to measuring the effectiveness of mobile video? If you’re not 100% sure how to answer that question, you’re not alone. Which is why Facebook asked us to help them create and launch 9 Views on Video, an educational campaign targeting the Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) region, to help marketers understand how to make and measure thumb-stopping mobile video advertising.
There are a lot of great reasons to be working with video advertising now, but our relationship with video is changing. “We’re consuming video on mobile very differently than we used to consume video,” said Beth Antonelli, Measurement Marketing Manager for Southern & Central EMEA, when I talked to her via video conference about the campaign.
“Worldwide, 75% of video viewing is on mobile devices. There are lots of opportunity for advertisers with mobile video,” she told me. “But also a lot of questions.”
Debunking, at scale
Not just questions, but myths, misconceptions, and confusion as well. The seeds of the 9 Views on Video campaign were found in a concurrent southern Europe Facebook campaign, a series of marketing trade publication interviews busting video advertising myths.
“For us it’s really relevant and pertinent to help marketers get the facts about what works on mobile so they can do it right,” Beth said.
“Early on I thought this campaign had great potential to scale up across EMEA. So we started working to transform this into a full-on digital video campaign.”
9 Views on Video from across Facebook
Launched recently, we worked with Beth to create a digital-first campaign to showcase Facebook’s range of digital interfaces – static posts, video posts, Canvas and Carousel.
At the heart of the campaign is a series video interviews with internal Facebook marketing experts from a variety of specialist fields and offices across the EMEA region, including Marketing Science, Advertising Insights, Product Marketing and Communications Planning.
“We wanted the campaign to be truly collaborative and really represent EMEA as a whole, bringing in people from lots of different departments with lots of different skills. We also wanted to choose people who are not only expert in the subject, but also have experience working with clients so they know the questions those people are asking. They’re people who’ve really done the research, too and are actively working on developing and communicating best practices every day.”
Leadership on camera
And top of the list was EMEA Vice-President Nicola Mendelsohn, who appears in an introduction video with a welcome message kicking off the 9 video.
“We wanted leadership on this campaign,” said Beth. “Nicola is really an advocate for anything we do that is scalable, so it was great to have her involvement and belief in the power of this campaign’s message for the entire region.”
Working with the raw footage from the London shoot, for the project we cut and edited the 2-3 minute videos, including post-production, closed-captioning, localization and subtitling in 5 languages (and learned a lot in the process).
The campaign, which even went beyond the Facebook platform to engage LinkedIn Inmail advertising and a language-localized external minisite, is a supporting campaign for Facebook’s global Great Day to Video campaign, which “puts the emphasis on creativity, inspiration and attention-grabbingness,” said Beth.
Measuring what matters
In a campaign focused on what works in mobile video advertising, I asked Beth, what success metrics are you going to be focused on?
“We’ll look at the usual digital metrics: CTR, time on site (for the min site), etc. But the big ones for me are reach – we want this to be as scalable as possible – and estimated ad recall in our platform.”
Partnering to take on the challenge
With the project live, I asked Beth to take a minute and reflect on the campaign.
“The big challenge for me was to create a scalable campaign that really reflected our diversity, while filming and coordinating 10 different people across countries and departments,” said Beth.
And at Moskito Design we partnered to help her team rise to the challenge. “You guys at Moskito have been so easy to work with. You’re very responsive. I never have to worry about deadlines on my side. You always listen, you’re quick learners and you produce great, quality, creative work.
Changing perceptions, one view at a time
Even with 9 View on Video out there, Facebook’s efforts to inform and educate are far from done.
“With educational campaigns, repetition is very important,” Beth told me. “And we hope to scale beyond EMEA.”
And while it’s true video can deliver value for brands in a matter of seconds, Facebook is thinking beyond the single video campaign.
“We want to change perceptions,” she said, “and to do that you have to think long term.”
From Lombardy to EMEA and beyond, at Moskito Design we can help you build big impact educational video marketing campaigns to reach whatever region you call yours.
