Dive Brief:
- Video ads on Facebook currently autoplay on mute by default, and Hotels.com has crafted a solution to work around the silence.
- The brand created videos that push out their message with or without sound, using subtitles if the sound is off and an interpreter delivering the ad's message via American Sign Language interpreter.
- The spot -- titled "Interpreter" -- has been viewed over a million times and is garnering five times the engagement numbers versus previous Hotels.com video ads.
Dive Insight:
Hotels.com has come to a simple but important conclusion: when you're given lemons... think outside of the norm and adapt your video campaigns to your surroundings (in this case, muted on Facebook). Not only does the booking site's ad now work whether or not the user turns on the sound, it also speaks directly to the ASL community.
Autoplay video ads have been a hit for Facebook and advertisers. Earlier this year, Facebook announced it had hit 4 billion video views a day, climbing from 1 billion just in September of last year. One study even predicted that more marketers would upload videos to Facebook this year than YouTube. If other marketers catch on that there are ways around the mute, that trend is likely to persist.