Using Facebook video ads can be a powerful and scalable way to reach customers. You can reach highly targeted audiences in a way that works for your budget. There are increasingly easy ways to use Facebook ads to connect with your audience as well, like interactive videos and vertical formats.
Facebook feed ads allow you to reach people scrolling their feeds. Stories on Instagram and Facebook are seen by hundreds of millions of people a day, and that includes ads placed in stories.
The following are some important things to know about optimizing Facebook video ads.
1. Optimize Video Ads for Mobile
Mobile viewing is the primary way people watch online content. Smartphones and tablets are much more commonly used than desktop computers. Video ads need flexibility so they can function across the board. Facebook hosts different aspect ratios but completely embraces vertical video, primarily because of the engagement rates with mobile viewers. If you’re using the newer live video streaming features, these are optimized for vertical video first.
When you upload a video, make sure that you’re optimizing it for vertical viewing.
2. Consider Your Objective
You want to maximize the bidding strategy you’re using with your Facebook video ads, and in doing so, you need to think about what your objective is. Your ad bidding is also going to affect your conversion rates and CTA. Paid social campaign objectives are usually one of four objectives.
The objectives are:
- Cost-per-click, or CPC, is a format that drives people to take a certain action after viewing a video, such as visiting your site or blog.
- The cost per 1,000 impressions is CMP. This format is for when your goal is reaching a wider audience, and you primarily want to expand your reach.
- Cost-per-lead or CPL is the format to get video viewers to fill out a form or to collect their personal information.
- Cost-per-view or CPV is a newer metric that’s entirely for videos. The metric looks at how long viewers watch a video. It’s a good metric for measuring and increasing your engagement.
According to Facebook, there are two bidding options recommended for video ads CPM and CPV.
3. Targeting Your Audience
When you define your target audience, you’re ultimately showcasing an understanding of who your ideal customer is. You should think about your buyer personas and what you already know about the behavior of your buyers. The better you understand your audience, and the deeper the level, the better you’re going to grasp how to deliver content that will best resonate.
Facebook will let you use a wide range of targeting tools like location, interests, and behaviors. You can also use demographics like age and gender and retargeting for audiences that have already interacted with your business.
A lookalike audience is when profiles are similar to your page followers or people who have interacted with your competitors or other businesses like yours. You can also build a custom list.
4. Use Attention-Grabbing Thumbnails
When people are on Facebook, they’re scrolling. Sometimes, it’s pretty mindless scrolling. Even when you’re using integrated auto-play, there needs to be a way for you to convince your viewers to spend a few seconds on your video.
To do that, try to aim to have the most eye-catching video thumbnails possible and a great opening frame.
You don’t have the opportunity for long introductions on your Facebook video ads. People will spend about 1.7 seconds on average looking at a piece of content, so this is your only chance to get your audience engaged.
5. Optimize It Without Sound
Around 85% of videos on Facebook are played without sound. That doesn’t even just include mobile views. It’s across the site. Most Facebook users aren’t regularly using sound, so you have to take this into consideration as you’re designing your video.
Make sure you have captions and that they reflect what your video’s actually saying.
6. Tailor Ads for Different Audiences
You have to remember that a one-size-fits-all approach isn’t necessarily ideal for your video ads. You want your videos to tell a story, and that story needs to be relatable to a target audience. If you have multiple buyer personas, you want to create distinctive videos for each of them.
Video production is going to be more expensive and time-consuming, but the trade-off is that your ads are going to be more engaging and effective.
Facebook targeting really allows you to reach audiences on a granular level, so making different videos can have a significant payoff.
You also want to have one story per video, meaning the story you tell. Don’t go off on a tangent, and try to tell multiple stories within a single video.
7. Know the Anatomy of a Facebook Video Ad
Once you’ve made a video or a set of videos and you’re ready to post them, optimizing them relies on understanding the anatomy.
First, there is an account link. This is a link to your Facebook account. This is also what will showcase the word “sponsored” to let your audience know that it’s not an organic post. Then, there’s the primary copy that’s above the video view. If you use more than 125 characters, viewers may have to click read more to see it all, so keep that in mind.
Then, there’s the video view where it actually displays. A user customizes their Facebook settings if they want videos to play automatically, show a still image until they hit play, or play sound automatically.
Headlines actually show up before the video view, and if they’re more than 40 characters, they might not be visible.
Then, there’s a call-to-action button. This is a button that you can click on in the lower right part of an ad. You can choose from pre-set calls to action.
You can see that an in-feed ad will accept engagements and will show whether the sound is on or off.
With the above tips, you at least have a starting point for optimizing Facebook video ads to get the best possible ROI.