On Wednesday Canadians’ Facebook feeds will be flooded with video ads for The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1.
The film’s Canadian distributor, Entertainment One (also known as eOne), has signed on as the first Canadian advertiser to use Facebook‘s “premium video” ad unit. Launched in the U.S. in March, the ad unit is Facebook’s biggest play as a mass media provider.
The ad unit has been available to managed clients with a dedicated Facebook rep in Canada since May, but Entertainment One is the first to use it.
According to the company, premium video is designed for awareness campaigns aiming to reach a large audience in a short period of time. The video ads for The Hunger Games will run for a 24-hour period. During that time, it will rotate through nine piece of creative to advertise the film.
Each video will close with a carousel featuring two additional videos, providing extra content for interested viewers. While the first video can be up to 30-seconds, the additional videos in the carousel can be long format, according to a Facebook Canada rep.
The campaign aims to generate mass awareness for the third installment of the blockbuster franchise, with the goal of expanding its audience beyond the young female demographic that propelled The Hunger Games to popularity.
In a release, Joanna Miles, vice-president of marketing at Entertainment One Films Canada, said the ad unit provided the distributor an opportunity to tell “enough of the story to get audiences excited about the film.”
“With Mockingjay Part 1, we have such incredible content to work with, so after several years of success on the Facebook platform, it was a natural extension for us to leverage a new product that allows users to scroll through various videos and immerse themselves in The Hunger Games world,” she said.
Entertainment One and its agency, Spoke, worked directly with Facebook’s creative team to optimize the video creative for the network – a service the social network provides to advertisers who make large spends like the one required for premium video.
Like TV ads, Facebook’s premium video ads are bought based on Targeted Gross Rating Points (GRPs). Nielsen Online Campaign Ratings measures the delivery of the ads and advertisers pay based on that third party measurement.
Premium ads are autoplay, much like the ads uploaded to Facebook by consumers. However, if a user does not want to watch the video ad, they can simply scroll past it and it will cease to play.
