Facebook India’s Avinash Pant on finding the winning strategy for its biggest audience
Facebook’s director-marketing Avinash Pant holds forth in an exclusive chat with The Drum on the social networking brand’s consumer marketing strategy in India, its evolution, and the way forward for the Facebook family of apps.
There are over 330m users of Facebook in India, making it the social network’s largest audience in the world by country, according to Statista. Alongside this, both Instagram and Whatsapp are also widely used, creating an interesting opportunity for consumer marketing within the Facebook family of services. To understand how this is being executed, The Drum spoke to Facebook’s director of marketing, India, Avinash Pant.
From 15-second films to over 7-minute-long brand films, how do you navigate the diverse journey of creating stories for the Facebook family that also includes, Instagram and WhatsApp?
Each of the platforms plays a different role in our lives and the family of apps is deeply enmeshed in the cultural fabric of the country – from messaging for Whatsapp to self-expression on Instagram to engage with communities at large on Facebook.
While the journey of creating stories for our apps has been diverse (from building and reinforcing our 15-second narrative for Instagram Reels, to the recent Eid film), the larger objective has been to showcase the value each of the apps brings to the lives of the user base. The fundamental proposition continues to be able to tell stories that bring alive the value of each of our apps for consumers, and compelling stories have no limit on durations.
More together Eid film
What has been Facebook’s consumer marketing strategy in India and how has it evolved in the last 12-18 months?
India is a key market for Facebook and our broader consumer marketing strategy is focused on building trust with people who use our products and services and building value around each of our apps.
We began our consumer marketing journey in India last year with the ‘more together’ campaign, which focused on showcasing how people can harness the power of their communities and connections. Shortly after the first phase of the campaign went live, the pandemic struck. Increasingly people turned to the platform to connect, support, and help one another, which helped in making the campaign all the more relevant. Over the last year, we have been drawing inspiration for our campaigns from the way people have used Facebook during these times.
More together launch film
More together jersey film
More together band film
How has the Facebook family of brands helped in solving the problems being faced in the post-pandemic world?
People have turned to the family of apps to stay connected with friends, family, and communities and to support one another. They have used Facebook groups extensively for coordinated relief efforts, hosting FB lives, and much more. It started with connecting over 2 billion people globally to authoritative Covid-19 information through our Information Centre. The Covid-19 vaccine finder tool was introduced to help users navigate where they can find vaccines and book an appointment in their nearest possible neighborhood.
In addition, official chatbots were expanded on WhatsApp, to help people get registered for a vaccination with respective health authorities. The Covid-19 announcement tool in India was also extended, enabling health departments of 33 Indian states and union territories to share essential COVID-19 related updates with their respective communities.
What has been the overarching brief for the consumer marketing theme and the ‘more together’ campaigns?
The campaigns have been focused on spotlighting stories inspired by numerous real-life experiences of people harnessing the power of their connections and communities. Over the last year, we have seen this reflected in the innumerable ways people have come together on our platforms to help and support one another.
More Together young parents film
More Together roommates film
More Together grandparents film
An important aspect of the work has been to keep it truly relevant from a context of the larger reality and what people are dealing with. Therefore, our campaign during the height of Covid 19 lockdown last year spoke of the kind of help and outreach being seen on the platform.
The IPL moment was a significant one in terms of some sign of normalcy in an otherwise difficult period and therefore the mood of the campaign was more celebratory with people coming together while maintaining social distancing.
Diwali, while signifies prosperity, was a poignant moment as many people were facing grim realities and out of that thinking was born the ‘Pooja Didi’ film that again brought alive the power of people coming together.
Even during the recent Eid campaign, the idea behind Rizwan’s story was to provide a message of hope to everyone.
Specifically, what is it that these campaigns are setting out to achieve in the context of the different profiles of the various sub-brands?
Our apps are entrenched in the cultural fabric of India, from WhatsApp becoming a commonly used verb for how India communicates, to Instagram celebrating the culture of the country even as creators spark off new and energizing movements, to the birthdays and anniversaries and big life events that get celebrated on Facebook every day.
We believe it is important to communicate the role that each of our apps plays in one’s life. We want to be more assertive in telling our own stories and feel that it is time for us to stand up and speak directly to the people using our Apps.
More together football film
More together pet film
How are you navigating the fact that social media has been in the midst of a lot of controversies across the globe, and India, around many issues like data privacy, fake news, content strategy, etc.?
We know that there are things that need to be fixed, and it’s our responsibility to take those issues seriously. We also know that there are things that are working well, and the world needs to know about them. Through our consumer marketing campaigns, we are focused on delivering the unique value proposition of each of our apps.
As the India marketing head of possibly the world’s largest social media network, what are your top three key tasks?
Relevance for a wide consumer base – Since our most thriving communities are here in India, it means that our target audience is vast, and we need to be very mindful of appealing to and being relevant to the length and breadth of the country through the work we do. We have been very mindful of this. For our ‘more together’ campaign during IPL last year we anchored our stories in various parts of the country to showcase the return to normalcy and developed films specifically for the south depicting the culture, architecture, and traditions from the south so that the campaign resonated with people from the region.
Building on the deeply entrenched family of Apps – Consumers have deep relationships with our apps built over the years and the work has to be cognizant of how consumers perceive us and build on the sentiment. A great example of this is our WhatsApp work – “It’s between you’ campaign that built on the deeply intimate experience of consumers on WhatsApp.
Looking out for the winning strategy – In a land of massive opportunity and significant scale sometimes it is possible that wins can come from many directions. Thus, it is very important to get sharp about the key task and what we are betting on. For example, with increasing interest in short-form video, Reels on Instagram is a great example that was piloted first in India. The campaign was built around inviting people into the world of creation to help express themselves. The very first campaign for Instagram was launched during IPL, with the idea of inspiring the creator in everyone.
Today, we are releasing Facebook Graph API v18.0 and Marketing API v18.0. As part of this release, we are highlighting changes below that we believe are relevant to parts of our developer community. These changes include announcements, product updates, and notifications on deprecations that we believe are relevant to your application(s)’ integration with our platform.
For a complete list of all changes and their details, please visit our changelog.
General Updates
Consolidation of Audience Location Status Options for Location Targeting
As previously announced in May 2023, we have consolidated Audience Location Status to our current default option of “People living in or recently in this location” when choosing the type of audience to reach within their Location Targeting selections. This update reflects a consolidation of other previously available options and removal of our “People traveling in this location” option.
We are making this change as part of our ongoing efforts to deliver more value to businesses, simplify our ads system, and streamline our targeting options in order to increase performance efficiency and remove options that have low usage.
This update will apply to new or duplicated campaigns. Existing campaigns created prior to launch will not be entered in this new experience unless they are in draft mode or duplicated.
Add “add_security_recommendation” and “code_expiration_minutes” to WA Message Templates API
Earlier this year, we released WhatsApp’s authentication solution which enabled creating and sending authentication templates with native buttons and preset authentication messages. With the release of Graph API v18, we’re making improvements to the retrieval of authentication templates, making the end-to-end authentication template process easier for BSPs and businesses.
With Graph API v18, BSPs and businesses can have better visibility into preset authentication message template content after creation. Specifically, payloads will return preset content configuration options, in addition to the text used by WhatsApp. This improvement can enable BSPs and businesses to build “edit” UIs for authentication templates that can be constructed on top of the API.
Note that errors may occur when upgrading to Graph API v18 if BSPs or businesses are taking the entire response from the GET request and providing it back to the POST request to update templates. To resolve, the body/header/footer text fields should be dropped before passing back into the API.
Re-launching dev docs and changelogs for creating Call Ads
- Facebook Reels Placement for Call Ads
Meta is releasing the ability to deliver Call Ads through the Facebook Reels platform. Call ads allow users to call businesses in the moment of consideration when they view an ad, and help businesses drive more complex discussions with interested users. This is an opportunity for businesses to advertise with call ads based on peoples’ real-time behavior on Facebook. Under the Ad set Level within Ads Manager, businesses can choose to add “Facebook Reels” Under the Placements section. - Re-Launching Call Ads via API
On September 12, 2023, we’re providing updated guidance on how to create Call Ads via the API. We are introducing documentation solely for Call Ads, so that 3P developers can more easily create Call Ads’ campaigns and know how to view insights about their ongoing call ad campaigns, including call-related metrics. In the future, we also plan to support Call Add-ons via our API platform. Developers should have access to the general permissions necessary to create general ads in order to create Call Ads via the API platform.Please refer to developer documentation for additional information.
Deprecations & Breaking Changes
Graph API changes for user granular permission feature
We are updating two graph API endpoints for WhatsAppBusinessAccount. These endpoints are as follows:
- Retrieve message templates associated with WhatsAppBusiness Account
- Retrieve phone numbers associated with WhatsAppBusiness Account
With v18, we are rolling out a new feature “user granular permission”. All existing users who are already added to WhatsAppBusinessAccount will be backfilled and will continue to have access (no impact).
The admin has the flexibility to change these permissions. If the admin changes the permission and removes access to view message templates or phone numbers for one of their users, that specific user will start getting an error message saying you do not have permission to view message templates or phone numbers on all versions v18 and older.
Deprecate legacy metrics naming for IG Media and User Insights
Starting on September 12, Instagram will remove duplicative and legacy, insights metrics from the Instagram Graph API in order to share a single source of metrics to our developers.
This new upgrade reduces any confusion as well as increases the reliability and quality of our reporting.
After 90 days of this launch (i.e. December 11, 2023), we will remove all these duplicative and legacy insights metrics from the Instagram Graph API on all versions in order to be more consistent with the Instagram app.
We appreciate all the feedback that we’ve received from our developer community, and look forward to continuing to work together.
Please review the media insights and user insights developer documentation to learn more.
Deprecate all Facebook Wi-Fi v1 and Facebook Wi-Fi v2 endpoints
Facebook Wi-Fi was designed to improve the experience of connecting to Wi-Fi hotspots at businesses. It allowed a merchant’s customers to get free Wi-Fi simply by checking in on Facebook. It also allowed merchants to control who could use their Wi-Fi and for how long, and integrated with ads to enable targeting to customers who had used the merchant’s Wi-Fi. This product was deprecated on June 12, 2023. As the partner notice period has ended, all endpoints used by Facebook Wi-Fi v1 and Facebook Wi-Fi v2 have been deprecated and removed.
API Version Deprecations:
As part of Facebook’s versioning schedule for Graph API and Marketing API, please note the upcoming deprecations:
Graph API
- September 14, 2023: Graph API v11.0 will be deprecated and removed from the platform
- February 8, 2024: Graph API v12.0 will be deprecated and removed from the platform
- May 28, 2024: Graph API v13.0 will be deprecated and removed from the platform
Marketing API
- September 20, 2023: Marketing API v14.0 will be deprecated and removed from the platform
- September 20, 2023: Marketing API v15.0 will be deprecated and removed from the platform
- February 06, 2024: Marketing API v16.0 will be deprecated and removed from the platform
To avoid disruption to your business, we recommend migrating all calls to the latest API version that launched today.
Facebook Platform SDK
As part of our 2-year deprecation schedule for Platform SDKs, please note the upcoming deprecations and sunsets:
- October 2023: Facebook Platform SDK v11.0 or below will be sunset
- February 2024: Facebook Platform SDK v12.0 or below will be sunset
First seen at developers.facebook.com
Before today (August 28, 2023), advertisers could not promote images and/or videos used in Instagram Stories as ads via the Instagram Marketing API. This process created unwanted friction for our partners and their customers.
After consistently hearing about this pain point from our developer community, we have removed this unwanted friction for advertisers and now allow users to seamlessly promote their image and/or video media used in Instagram Stories as ads via the Instagram Marketing API as of August 28, 2023.
We appreciate all the feedback received from our developer community, and hope to continue improving your experience.
Please review the developer documentation to learn more.
First seen at developers.facebook.com
Launching second release of Facebook Reels API: An enterprise solution for desktop and web publishers
We’re excited to announce that the second release of FB Reels API is now publicly available for third-party developers. FB Reels API enables users of third-party platforms to share Reels directly to public Facebook Pages and the New Pages Experience.
FB Reels API has grown significantly since the first release in September 2022. The new version of the APIs now support custom thumbnails, automatic music tagging, tagging collaborators, longer format of reels and better error handling.
FB Reels API will also support scheduling and draft capability to allow creators to take advantage of tools provided either by Meta or by our partners. Based on the feedback we received from our partners, we’ll now provide additional audio insights via the Audio Recommendations API and reels performance metrics via the Insights API.
Our goal in the next couple of releases is to continue to make it easier for creators to develop quality content by adding features like early copyright detection and A/B testing. We’re also excited to start working on enhanced creation features like Video clipping- so stay tuned to hear more about those features in the future.
Call-to-Action
If you are a developer interested in integrating with the Facebook Reels API, please refer to the Developer Documents for more info.
Not sure if this product is for you? Check out our entire suite of sharing offerings.
Tune in to Product @scale event to learn more about FB Video APIs and hear from some of our customers.
First seen at developers.facebook.com
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