Here’s Why Facebook Is Testing Offline Video Access In India?
Facebook‘s (NASDAQ:FB) increased focus on video content has hit the slow internet connectivity wall in emerging economies and the company is now testing ways to bring these users to the video fold. Weeks after YouTube launched a “Smart Offline” feature in India, which allows users to schedule a video to be pushed offline overnight to take advantage of cheaper download rates, Facebook is now testing a new video download option with a small percentage of users in India. This feature will allow users to sync videos to their device when they have a WiFi connection, for offline viewing later within the Facebook app. With poor mobile connectivity in some regions of the country, users do not have the ability to watch videos on the move, limiting the reach of Facebook’s video content. As the company is pushing more and more content via video, this feature should ensure that its huge base of users in emerging economies gets access to this content and subsequently advertisers reach a wider audience.
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Expanding The Reach Of Video Content
As advertisers increase their spend on digital videos, Facebook is taking several initiatives to attract video advertisers to its platform. According to eMarketer, the U.S. digital video ad spending is expected to reach nearly $15 billion by 2019, comprising more than 16% of the total digital ad spending. Facebook mentioned that more than 500 million people watch a video a day on its platform and the company is testing new experiences such as suggested videos to enable people to discover videos they might be interested in. While this push for video content will attract advertisers, it might frustrate Facebook users in emerging economies where slow internet connectivity makes it difficult to watch videos. India is a huge market for Facebook where it already has more than 140 million users, 90% of whom access the platform via their mobile devices. It is the company’s largest market outside the U.S. With increasing internet penetration and growing middle class population, the region presents a huge growth opportunity for Facebook. In order to tap into the market with the challenge of slow internet connections, Facebook has launched several initiatives such as data light version of its app called Facebook Lite. Allowing users to save videos for offline viewing will ensure that this huge user base becomes part of Facebook’s new strategy of promoting more video content on its platform. To ensure security of the downloaded content, Facebook will ensure that the content cannot be shared or viewed in any other application apart from its own app.
Facebook is relying heavily on emerging markets for its future growth as users growth stagnates in developed countries. Adapting its product to the challenges faced in these nations is critical for this growth and Facebook is taking the right steps in this direction.
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