How to localize video ads for a new market

To localize a video ad, you change everything a viewer in the new country would notice as foreign, not only the language. That means the script, rewritten to fit each shot's timing, the on-screen text, the prices and units, the proof, the claims the law allows there, and often the person on screen. You can do it with subtitles, a dub, a local reshoot or a remake with generated footage. Which one depends on how much you want to spend before you know the market buys.

Translation, localization and remaking

Translation changes the words and nothing else. The same footage plays with subtitles or a new voice track.

Localization keeps the ad's idea and footage where it can, and changes what would mark it as imported: captions, overlays, currency, the award it cites, the disclaimer.

Remaking keeps only the structure, meaning the beats, their lengths and where the cuts land, and produces everything else again for the market: a presenter who speaks the language, a setting that looks local, a script written in that language.

What changes beyond the words

Line length and speech rate

This is the problem that surprises people. A faithful translation is often too long for its shot.

Languages pack different amounts of information into a syllable, and their speakers talk at different speeds to make up for it. A study of 17 languages in Science Advances found that languages with less information per syllable are spoken faster, so that all of them carry information at a similar rate, about 39 bits a second. The speech rate itself varied widely: the average was 6.6 syllables a second, the slowest speaker was around 4.3 and the fastest 9.1.

That study measured people reading aloud at their normal pace. An ad is not read at a normal pace. A direct-response script is already close to as fast as the presenter can go, so a translation that needs more syllables has no room. You have two bad options, speeding up the voice or letting the line run over the cut, and one good one: rewrite the line.

How to rewrite to the timing:

1. List every line of the original with its start time, its end time and its length in seconds.
2. Write down what each line has to do: name the symptom, dismiss the usual fix, say how to use the product.
3. Write a new line in the target language that does that job. Do not translate the sentence. Drop the adjectives and the second example first.
4. Have a native speaker read it aloud at the ad's pace with a stopwatch. If it runs over, cut words. Do not read faster.
5. If a line still cannot fit, lengthen its shot by a few frames and take them back from a shot with slack, so the cuts still land on the words.

A real case: ReplicateAds remade a 35-second English talking-head ad in Polish, rewriting each of its 10 lines to the reference's timing. The remake runs 36.4 seconds against the reference's 34.7, because Polish needed slightly more time, and every cut still lands on its beat.

On-screen text and captions

Captions, overlays, lower thirds and the call-to-action text all need redoing. Burned-in captions in the original language cannot be translated in place: you need the clean footage or you need to make the shots again. Translated text is often longer, so check that it still fits the safe area and does not cover the product or the face. If the ad shows a screenshot, a label or packaging with text on it, that needs the local version too.

The presenter and the setting

A viewer decides in the first second whether this ad is from here. A dubbed presenter whose lips do not match, a kitchen with the wrong sockets, a product box in another language: each one says "imported". Whether that hurts depends on the category. For some products foreign origin is a selling point. For a recommendation from "someone like me", it works against you.

Currency, units and offers

Change the currency, the price, the units of weight and volume, the date format and the delivery promise. Check that the offer exists in the new market: the same discount, the same bundle, the same guarantee period.

Claims and disclaimers

What you may say about a product differs by country, and health is the strictest area. In the EU, Regulation (EC) No 1924/2006 covers health claims made in the advertising of foods. Its Article 10 prohibits health claims unless they are authorised and included in the EU's lists of authorised claims, and its Article 12 does not allow claims that refer to the recommendations of individual doctors or health professionals. The European Commission publishes the permitted claims.

That is one regulation for one category. Products for pets, cosmetics, financial products and anything medical each have their own rules, and they vary by country. So if your script says a product supports, prevents or treats something, do not assume the sentence that ran at home may run abroad. Have someone who knows the market's rules for your category read the script before you produce it, and replace the disclaimer with the one that market requires.

Awards and proof

An award, a magazine, a retailer or a review site that your home audience knows may mean nothing in the new market. Replace it with proof that travels (a number of customers, a rating, a test result) or with a local equivalent you really have. If you have no proof that counts there yet, shorten the beat.

AI labelling rules

If you use an AI dub, lip-sync or generated footage, check each platform's rule before launch. TikTok's advertising policy allows AI-generated and significantly edited media in ads if it is disclosed, with TikTok's label or your own clear disclaimer, and says that undisclosed AI-generated content gets the ad rejected or restricted. Meta says it adds an "AI info" label to ads created or significantly edited with its generative AI tools and to ads it detects were made with third-party tools. These policies change, so read the current page.

Four ways to do it, compared

Prices vary too much by market, creator and vendor to give one honest figure for each, so the table compares them relative to one another.

None of these fixes a script that makes a claim the market does not allow, or a landing page that is still in the original language.

The process, step by step

1. Pick the ad. Take the one with the most spend behind it at home, not your favourite. Its structure is the asset you are moving.
2. Measure it. Write down each beat, each shot's start and end, each line and its length, and every piece of on-screen text. The anatomy of a winning UGC ad shows what that table looks like.
3. List what will not travel. Go through the ad with someone from the market and mark each thing they notice as foreign: the price, the award, an idiom, the kitchen.
4. Check the claims. For each claim, confirm it is allowed in the new market and find the disclaimer that market requires.
5. Rewrite to the timing. Line by line, as above. A native speaker writes or at least edits it. Machine translation is a draft, not a script.
6. Choose the method. Use the table. For a first test, pick the cheapest method that removes the things your local reader marked in step 3.
7. Produce and review. Have the native speaker watch the result with the sound on and then off. Check pronunciation of the brand name, caption spelling, and that each cut lands on its word.
8. Localize where the ad sends people. The product page, checkout, currency, delivery terms and the first support reply.

How to test a market cheaply first

The expensive mistake is a full local shoot for a market that does not buy. Spend in stages instead.

• Look before you spend. Look up the ads your competitors run in that country. A competitor that keeps the same ad running for months is probably selling there. How to find competitors' winning ads covers where to look.
• Start with one ad and the cheapest method that looks local enough. Subtitles or a dub if your local reader found little to object to. A remake if they found a lot.
• Run it in its own campaign. Give the new country a separate campaign and budget, so its results are not averaged in with your home market's.
• Compare it with your home market's early numbers. Look at the share of viewers who stay past the first three seconds, the click-through rate and the cost per add-to-cart. Purchases will be too few at first to judge.
• Decide what the result means. People watching but not clicking points at the offer or the proof. People clicking but not buying points at the page, the price or delivery. Nobody watching points at the hook or the market.
• Then commit. When a cheap version pays for itself, that is the moment to brief a local creator for the versions you will run for months.

ReplicateAds makes the remake option: it measures your reference ad shot by shot, rewrites each line in the target language to the original's timing, and generates the footage, voice and music new, in English, Spanish, German, French, Italian, Portuguese, Dutch or Polish. A 35-second talking-head ad costs about $30. It is in private beta, and you can request access.