From Elise Dobson
Improving Social Media
February 16, 2023
14-minute read
What are Facebook Video Ads?
Facebook video ads are an excellent way to showcase your product, service, or brand. You can create video ads or boost a post using a video from your Facebook page through Meta’s Ads Manager.
What is the typical length of a Facebook video ad?
The maximum length for a Facebook video ad is 240 minutes, although shorter videos are more likely to achieve higher views, which impacts your ad’s performance. For this reason, Facebook states that videos under 15 seconds typically perform the best.
How to Create Video Ads on Facebook
Do you want to experience these benefits for your online store? Here is a step-by-step guide to creating video ads using Facebook’s Ads Manager.
1. Choose Your Campaign Objective
Before starting any new ad campaign, be clear about what you want to achieve with your video ads. Facebook calls this the campaign objective.
Select one of the following objectives that reflect your overall business goals:
- Awareness
- Traffic
- Engagement
- Lead Generation
- Sales
2. Define Your Target Audience
Next, identify the type of person who will help you achieve your campaign goal. Facebook’s ad algorithm filters these individuals. You will only be charged when you reach your target audience.
Try targeting options like:
- Age
- Gender
- Location
- Job Title
- Income
- Hobbies and Interests
Also, try retargeting at this stage. Use Facebook Pixel to create a custom audience – people who have visited your website (or specific URLs on the site). If someone visited your dog food product page, for example, you could show a targeted video ad review from a previous customer praising it.
3. Specify Ad Placement
Next, select where you want your videos to appear on Facebook and/or Instagram. Placement options include:
- News Feed
- Stories
- Facebook Marketplace
- Instagram Reels
- Instagram Explore
- Audience Network
- In-stream video ads
If this is your first time trying video ads on Facebook, choose automatic placement. The algorithm will place your video in the locations it knows are most likely to perform best. You can always fine-tune this once your ad starts getting traction.
4. Produce the Video
Once you’ve defined your target audience, it’s time to produce your video.
Best practices for producing a Facebook video ad vary depending on your target audience. New customers will have different expectations for the ads they expect to see from a toothpaste brand compared to a bike brand. So, start by researching your customers.
Check out previous video ads. Which messages did people enjoy the last time you ran an ad? Which formats had the highest engagement rates?
Analyze customer surveys. Extract the pain points that your current customers resolved by purchasing your product. Use that as a foundation for your video campaigns.
Many marketers fall into the trap of producing horizontal videos for Facebook ads. In many cases, you edit the video on a desktop computer.
However, 98.5% of Facebook users open the app on their mobile devices. Horizontal videos don’t take up much space on vertical screens – making it easy to scroll past them. Instead, produce square or vertical ads. They take up more space on mobile screens.
Add captions to your video. As Stephen Light, co-owner and CEO of Nolah, explains, many Facebook users watch videos without sound, making it essential to include captions so your audience can engage with the narrative – also increasing accessibility for hearing-impaired individuals and producing a visually compelling story whether with sound or not.
5.
Conduct A/B Tests to Improve Your Campaigns
Your first advertising campaign is not necessarily the one that achieves the best results. Experiment with your ad creatives – especially the video you are promoting – to see if one outperforms the others.
For example, let’s say you are running two campaigns on Facebook with the same goal (conversions), reaching the same audience. The only difference? One is an unboxing video, and the other is a product tutorial video.
After conducting an A/B test on both options, the unboxing video gets a higher view rate. The tutorial video generates more clicks.
Running both videos together is a waste of money. You know that the tutorial video is performing better for your goal. The smarter option is to build a digital marketing system that displays different videos based on their previous interactions.
In this case, change the campaign goal for the unboxing video to video views. The goal is to reach as many people as possible and increase brand awareness.
Then, retarget people who watched the unboxing video with a customer review video. The goal is to drive people to visit your website to purchase the showcased product – which is much easier when the potential customer already knows your brand and the product you are selling.
“The biggest mistake I see people make when testing ads: they don’t test multiple versions of the same creative,” says Savannah Sanchez, founder of The Social Savannah. “Changing variables slightly (with the same footage) can make a big difference in performance. The variables I love to test are different names and voiceover versus no voiceover, and so on. I often find that one version will greatly outperform the other, so testing multiple versions is crucial.”
10 Examples of Facebook Video Ads
Need inspiration for your next marketing campaign? Here are 10 types of Facebook video ads to try, with examples to illustrate how to do it.
1. Product Educational Videos
As mentioned earlier, educational videos fit products well. Teach potential customers about how the products you sell are made and their ease and speed.
For example, Huel runs a Facebook video ad that guides potential customers through the food-making process. The unique selling point of the brand is healthy, fast food. The Facebook ad shows potential customers scrolling through their news feed how easy its meals are to prepare.
2. Review Videos
Are you running video ads on Facebook to increase sales? Include reviews in your creative. Nearly nine out of ten online shoppers consult reviews before purchasing a product.
BestSelf, a brand that sells journals, uses this strategy with their Facebook video ads. The ad features a customer using the journal and describing it as the “#1 tool for productivity.”
3. User-Generated Content
User-generated content is exactly what it sounds like: content created by anyone other than your business – most often, your customers.
“Don’t feel the need to spend thousands of dollars on a polished, highly-produced video when a user-generated video that cost you nothing can perform much better,” says Stephen Heffernan, a digital specialist at The Connected Narrative.
4. Boomerang Videos
Bohemian videos were created by Instagram in 2015, and many social media users are used to seeing boomerang videos. It is a short video that plays back and forth to show the movement of an object. Build a sense of familiarity by using them as the basis for your Facebook video ad.
5.
Slow Motion Videos
When it comes to the videos you can use in your Facebook campaigns, a slow-motion video is a series of images that appear as a slideshow. Each frame comes together to make it look like the objects are appearing on screen by themselves.
6. Product Reveal Videos
Launching a new product is an impressive feat. Build excitement around your new line by rolling out a series of video ads on Facebook that showcase your new product in action.
7. Before and After Videos
Are you promoting a product that delivers noticeable improvements in people’s lives? Show that off with a before-and-after video.
8. Reaction Videos
Humans are wired to love reaction videos. Over 820,000 people search for “reaction” on YouTube every month. They are the perfect content for video ads on Facebook because potential customers see themselves in the person reacting.
9. Unboxing Videos
Unboxing videos are a popular type of online video. Popular YouTubers like ItsYeBoi share their unboxing experiences with millions of subscribers.
10. Comparison Videos
Online shopping makes it easier than ever for customers to compare different products throughout the buying process. For that reason, your unique selling proposition should be front and center in your video ads. Comparisons do just that.
Video Ad Best Practices on Facebook
Marketers have ranked video ads as the best ad format on Facebook – only surpassed by single image ads. Let’s take a look at four best practices to follow.
1. Start with a Video Template
It can be challenging to launch your first video ad on Facebook. You may not know where to start. So, you want to use a video ad template for your first ad.
2. Grab Attention Immediately
“By using striking visuals and sound, video captures our senses in a way no other ad format can, which is why using video ads on social media has proven to be extremely beneficial for engagement metrics,” says Stephen Light, co-owner and CEO of Nolah.
3. Follow Facebook Ad Specifications
To help your video ad look great, follow Facebook ad specifications. Viewers expect a lot from ad creativity, and you need to hit all the right marks to avoid rejection.
4. Educate Customers
Videos naturally tend toward educational content. Customers can see someone else interacting with the product, helping them overcome a significant hurdle in online shopping: the inability to see the product tangibly. (It’s the reason behind 22% of all e-commerce returns.)
“With consumers busy nowadays, they don’t have time to read your pitch or click on your site. However, they are more likely to watch engaging videos,” says Austin Dawes, CEO of Aimvein.
Choose the age group that would be interested in your product and educate them – how to use it, what it looks like, and why they need it – through an engaging video.
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Create Your Video Ads
Producing video might seem like an unnecessary process when running ads online. But it doesn’t have to be overly complicated. Record yourself interacting with the product – or better yet, ask customers and influencers to do it on your behalf.
Start experimenting with the examples mentioned above for Facebook video ads. Whether it’s a product review or a short boomerang, you’ll soon begin to experience the power of video ads on the platform.
Frequently Asked Questions About Video Ads on Facebook
How
Do video ads work on Facebook?
Facebook video ads use specific criteria to create ads that may interest users. Information such as age, interests, and past interactions with similar businesses help determine which ads are shown in users’ news feeds or on the side of the screen.
How much does Facebook charge for video ads?
The pricing for video ads on Facebook varies depending on your campaign goal, the audience you are targeting, the format you choose, and the engagement rate once it reaches your audience. Expect to achieve results worth $5 a day.
How can I get video ads on Facebook?
Choose your campaign objective. Define your target audience. Select ad placements. Produce the video. Conduct A/B testing.
What are the benefits of video ads on Facebook?
Video ads on Facebook are an extremely powerful tool for businesses, allowing them to quickly reach a wide range of potential customers and promote their goods and services to specific audiences. They also enable you to create high-quality, engaging content that people can interact with and share.
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