Video Ads are all the rage – and for good reason! Engagement on video ads is significantly higher than that on image ads, and Video Ads are an amazing way to build a warm audience at a low cost. But it's not as simple as just throwing up a video with $5/day behind it and hoping for the best – you still need a well-targeted audience, copy that converts, and these unique-to-video tips!
Optimizing Facebook Video Ads: Auto-play
This one is quick and easy! You never want to share videos from external sites/hosts like YouTube or Vimeo. When you do this, Facebook will display the video like a link to any other URL, as opposed to uploading the video directly to Facebook which will allow it to autoplay in the newsfeed, which is always what you want. The autoplay feature makes videos more eye-catching simply because a moving video stands out more than a static image.
Optimizing Facebook Video Ads: Captions
When videos auto-play in the newsfeed, they do so without sound (unless you've manually turned the sound on for a previous video). This is one reason why captioning videos is so important. It's also important to consider how many people are scrolling through Facebook from work (where they can't likely use the sound function) or on the go (where they're not likely to un-mute). Plus – there is the common curtesy of making accommodations for Deaf and Hard of Hearing individuals. As you can see, there are TONS of reasons why you should be captioning your videos.
My favorite way to do this is to go into Ads Manager and add the captions at the Ad-Level. I prefer to have Facebook auto-generate the captions, and then I review them for accuracy. This feature is only available for Ads, but you can “hack it out” if you want to caption a video with only organic reach – just watch the video below!
Optimizing Facebook Video Ads: Orientation
This is a hot topic that is always changing – what should your video orientation and size be?
82.5% of visitors to video-centric websites hold their smartphone in “portrait,” and because the vast majority of Facebook users are accessing Facebook from their mobile devices, it's always recommended to design for mobile first – which is why there has been a shift to preferring vertical video.
Below you'll find a handy dandy breakdown of different video orientations and where you can use them across Facebook, Instagram, and the Facebook family of Apps.
I highly recommend you focus on vertical video and not just traditional horizontal video!
Changes to Ad Delivery Optimization
Last year, Facebook launched “ThruPlay” to allow marketers to optimize ads that are watched to completion (or for at least 15 seconds). For the past 6 months or so Facebook has been able to confirm that ThruPlay performed comparably to 10-second video views and they've recently announced that they'll be making ThruPlay the default optimization goal for video view campaigns, and depreciating the ability to use 10-second video views.
What this means for you – if you are running ads, you should stop using 10-second video views to optimize your video campaigns, and opt instead for ThruPlay. Beginning July 31 (2019) any ads still using the 10-second optimization will be paused, so opting for ThruPlay will be the best option to ensure that your delivery is not disrupted edits to any existing campaigns.
At this time there has been no discussions about these changes impacting the ability to build audiences based on 10-second views. Audiences can be built for either 3- or 10- second viewers, whereas the ad optimization is either 2- or 15- second views, with 15-second also called “ThruPlay”)