AI has long been at the heart of our products: Arun Srinivas, Meta

What was launched during the pandemic, Instagram's Reels, has grown leaps and bounds in three years and has become an important part of media plans. Its #MadeOnReels program, which has been offering focused solutions to advertisers in India and encouraging them to use Reels more actively, has seen a positive response too. 

As far as the users are concerned, as per Statista's report, India is the largest market for Instagram and has gathered 229 million Instagram users as of January 2023. As a result, the annual advertising revenue of Instagram is also steadily increasing and is projected to reach roughly 40 billion U.S. dollars in annual ad sales in 2023. 

Social Samosa speaks to Arun Srinivas, the Director and Head of Ads Business (India), Meta, to find out how this user growth has helped in attracting brands on Reels, the changing paradigms of advertising, and how Meta has been using AI tools to strengthen their offerings for users and advertisers. 

Edited Excerpts:

Can you tell me about Reels' growth in India?

Globally, Reels plays have exceeded 200 billion per day across Facebook and Instagram, and it is a key part of our discovery engine. We're seeing good progress on Reels monetization as well, with the annual revenue run-rate across our apps now exceeding $10 billion, up from $3 billion last fall. 

Closer home, we see that India and Bharat come to Reels to be entertained. Trends are breaking on Reels and becoming a part of pop culture. A survey by Meta and external research firm Factworks also revealed that after watching reels, 82% of people followed a business, 77% purchased a product or a service, and 74% messaged a business. 

For businesses, this provides an opportunity to connect with consumers in an engaging and entertaining way. Some of the largest brands like Tanishq, Maruti Nexa, Amazon Prime Video, Cadbury’s Dairy Milk Silk, Meesho, Snitch, Navi, L’Oreal, and Amazon have run campaigns on Reels and found that not only Reels led to engagement and entertainment but also drove business outcomes whether it was an increase in message association, ad recall, conversions, or reaching out to a specific audience.

How do you think the advent of short video platforms has changed the advertising ecosystem?

Brands follow consumers where they are. At the moment, Reels is where that action is. As per our recent festive insights as well, which are meant to help marketers with their festive campaigns, 8 in 10 Diwali shoppers use Meta technologies to watch videos and Meta technologies is the most important channel for short-form videos (87%). 

For advertisers, short videos are also acting as a faster medium to reach out to tier 2 and tier 3 cities. As per an EY-FICCI report, 65% of short video users in India are currently from non-metro cities, indicating massive reach for advertisers in India.  

Add to this will be our investments in AI, which will drive better experiences, engagement, and business results today across our apps. 

With #MadeOnReels program, Meta has been working with key advertisers to help them use the platform effectively. How has this panned out? Can you provide some examples of successful advertising campaigns run on Reels in India and highlight the factors that contributed to their success?

At the beginning of 2023, we worked with nine of India’s largest businesses that leveraged Reels’ 90-second video feature and Meta’s wide community of creators under the #MadeOnReels program. Designed to be at the intersection of entertainment and connection, Reels enabled consumers to naturally discover the brands and products that they love.

After successfully running their campaigns on Reels, the brands found that not only did the campaign lead to increased engagement and entertainment on their social handles, but it also drove business outcomes. Be it an increase in message association, ad recall, conversions, or reaching out to a specific audience, the brands were able to successfully reach their branding targets.

One of the most impactful products promoted included Maruti Suzuki’s latest release, Fronx. It saw influencers further engage with the promotions by creating a promotional song for Fronx, leading to further engagement and launch amplification. 

What role do data privacy and user consent play in Meta's advertising ecosystem, and how does the company prioritize user data protection while serving personalized ads?

It's important to us that we maintain a high-quality experience in places where we recommend content to our community, and we are always working towards making sure the content we recommend is both safe and appropriate. Not all posts or accounts are eligible to be surfaced in the Reels viewer. We use a variety of signals, for example, if an account has recently violated our Community Guidelines and Community Standards, to determine eligibility.

Because we want Reels to be an enjoyable place, when an account posts something that violates our Guidelines and Standards, we do not show that content in Reels and simultaneously stop that account from appearing in Reels for a period of time. We are continuously investing in ways to ensure that the content that appears on Reels is enjoyable and appropriate for a global community of many ages. 

How does Meta's advertising platform differ from other major digital advertising platforms in India, and what unique advantages does it offer to advertisers?

What drives us at Meta is connections. We have 3.8 billion highly engaged people around the world who are actively conversing, sharing, caring, watching, seeking, gathering, experimenting—and, of course, shopping! Take Reels, for instance. 2 billion reels are reshared by people every day and that figure doubled in just six months!  

We believe every connection is an opportunity because, every day, we see people and businesses intersecting, connecting and growing together across our platforms. We see people connecting with the businesses, the products and the services that are going to fuel their next pursuit, help them become the person they aspire to be, live their best life.

Businesses are an integral part of people’s experience. This means business really is personal and is why we’ve woven businesses into the fabric of our consumer experience. 

Our commitment to businesses is that we don’t just help create demand, we help convert it as well, irrespective of where they are in their journeys; we have the solutions for them. 

What insights can you share about the long-term vision of Meta's advertising business in India and how it aligns with the broader goals of the company? With the festive season being a peak time for advertising and marketing, how has Meta strengthened its advertising offerings to attract more brands?

AI has long been at the heart of our products, underpinning all our investments and improvements to our apps and services. AI models continually learn how to achieve better outcomes based on seeing a variety of scenarios billions of times. This is game-changing.

In the face of ecosystem changes on signals and everyone’s growing focus on ROI, we’re improving the performance of our platforms through the investments we’re making in world-class business tools, privacy-enhancing technologies and sophisticated AI. AI-recommended content from accounts you don’t follow is now the fastest-growing category of content on Facebook's feed. Since introducing these recommendations, they have driven a 7% increase in overall time spent on the platform. (Q2 2023 Earnings)

On Facebook Feed in particular, recommended content from accounts you don't follow has increased significantly over the past year while also being more incremental to engagement - demonstrating people are getting added value from discovering content from new accounts. This results in better experiences for people and more outcomes for marketers. 

For e.g. The Good Glamm Group hoped to improve return on ad spend for two of its brands, MyGlamm and St. Botanica, and set out to experiment with using machine learning to automate its Facebook ad campaigns. They explored Advantage+ shopping campaigns by Meta. As a result, they saw a 58% higher return on ad spend for St. Botanica, compared to the usual campaign; 6% lower cost per purchase for MyGlamm, compared to the usual campaign; 5% higher return on ad spend for MyGlamm, compared to the usual campaign.