Emerging markets flock to Facebook’s Slideshow ad format
Facebook has released statistics that show its Slideshow ad format is proving popular in emerging markets, notably Brazil, Thailand, Mexico, India, Malaysia, Turkey, Vietnam, the Philippines, Indonesia, and South Africa. The lightweight video ad format has been viewed in 200 countries in just seven months.The format has the benefits of being easily produced, offering cross-device viewability, and accessible across a range of networks including 2G.

Rachael Power writes for TechForge Media, writing about marketing tech, connected cars and virtual reality. She has written for a number of online and print titles including the Irish Times, Irish Examiner, accountingWEB and BusinessZone. Rachael has a passion for digital marketing, journalism, gaming and fitness, and is on Twitter at: @rachpower10.

Facebook’s recently launched lightweight video ad format, Slideshow, has been viewed in 200 countries in just seven months.

The social media site released statistics on its Slideshow product today, almost week after it did the same with microsite creator Canvas.

Slideshow ads can be created quite quickly, using brands’ own images or with Facebook stock pictures. They can be viewed on any device, in any country, even those with 2G internet.

Facebook said the top 10 emerging market countries making use of these ad formats are Brazil, Thailand, Mexico, India, Malaysia, Turkey, Vietnam, Philippines, Indonesia and South Africa.

One small business that’ s been using the ad product, Sparkle in Pink, a girls’ clothing company based in Utah, said Facebook’s Slideshow was the “best-performing format we’ve found on Instagram and Facebook so far”.

In addition to Slideshow, Facebook has a number of other more complex video ad products, including Carousel and Instant Articles.It’s been making a number of ad-related announcements in recent weeks, including the fact that non-Facebook users will now be served ads created through the platform.

Back in 2007, Mark Zuckerberg said: “In the next hundred years information won’t be just pushed out to people, it will be shared among the millions of connections people have. The next hundred years will be different for advertising, and it starts today.”

It seems Facebook is really gunning to make sure this rings true in every single country, including emerging markets.

According to stats from the social media platform, there are over 50 million businesses using Pages on Facebook worldwide, and people post over 2.5 billion comments on these per month.

In addition, 3 million businesses are active advertisers on Facebook, with 70% of these outside the US.

The fastest growing region using Pages is South East Asia; it’s seeing a rise in Pages from Vietnam, Egypt, Indonesia, Peru and Turkey.