• In recent years, videos—and video advertising—have exploded in popularity on Facebook.
• Well-made Facebook video ads can grab a viewer’s attention, quickly give them information about your brand, and position your company as an expert in its field.
• Creating video ads can be challenging, so it’s best to work with a skilled ad agency to nail your strategy.

The Rise of Facebook Video Ads: Why Do They Work?

Right now, video content on social media appears to be on the upswing—and that definitely includes video advertising. In 2021, 15.8% of all content on Facebook was video-based. To put that in perspective, 12% of Facebook content fell into this category the year before.

Are you wondering why video ads are so successful on Facebook, Instagram, and other social platforms? Once you’ve read up on the powerful impact Facebook video ads can have when they’re created by skilled ad experts, you’ll know exactly why this should be a pillar of your digital marketing strategy.

Video Ads on Meta Platforms: Know the Basics

On a broad level, video ads don’t require much explanation—these are simply advertising posts that use video content to promote brands, services, and products. Your ad team can use Meta Ads Manager to create ads like these or boost a video your brand has already shared on Facebook.

Video ads are a popular choice for Meta advertisers because they do a great job of:

• Grabbing people’s attention. Videos are naturally great at getting people to keep watching, which makes them an incredibly powerful medium for online advertisers. That’s especially true for in-stream ads, which show up before, during, or after videos people are already focusing on.
• Efficiently sharing information. Even if a video ad is just a few seconds long, it can still communicate more information than the average text or image-based ad.
• Presenting businesses as experts. Your ad agency can easily use the video format to show the world how you helped your previous customers and clients.
• Helping advertisers stand out from the crowd. High-quality videos are much harder to prepare than polished ad copy or images. As a result, working with an agency capable of producing professional video ads will separate your brand from the competition.

What Is Your Ad’s Objective?

As is the case for other Facebook ads, your ad agency can choose from a list of objectives while creating video advertisements. These objectives are supported for standard video ads:

• Awareness. If your primary goal is building public knowledge of your brand, awareness is the right objective for you. Meta encourages advertisers to choose this objective while trying to show their video ads to a large audience that’s likely to watch and remember them.
• Traffic. This objective excels at sending viewers to your brand’s website, your app, or another destination.
• Engagement. Consider this objective if you’re trying to reach the group of people who are most likely to be interested in what you have to offer—and take action right away.
• App promotion. While using the app promotion objective, you can actively encourage people to start using your app. To start using this objective, you’ll need an app registered on Meta for Developers, an ad account linked to the app in question, and the Facebook SDK and App Events.
• Leads. When you’re aiming to get information from leads, motivate potential customers to give you a call, or connect with leads in Messenger, give the leads objective a try. (Notably, this is Meta’s only ad objective which lets advertisers include forms in ads.)
• Sales. Finally, the sales objective is exactly what it sounds like: an objective geared toward increasing your sales or conversions.

Best Practices for Mobile Video Ads

Facebook is not a mobile-exclusive service, but people are much more likely to use it on mobile phones than on any other device. In fact, 98.5% of Facebook users interact through their phones some or all of the time. That means making sure your video ads work well on mobile devices should be a high priority for your ad experts.

To make this easier for advertisers, Meta has prepared a list of best practices for mobile video ads. When your ad team is creating one of these ads, they should:

Keep Video Length in Mind

Short-form video is king on mobile devices, and your ads should follow suit. That said, some Meta ad placements allow for longer videos. Your ads can last up to 120 seconds on Instagram Feed and Audience Network, while Facebook Feed, Messenger Home, and Facebook Marketplace let advertisers share ads lasting up to 240 minutes.

Grab Viewer Attention Immediately

The sooner you give viewers a strong reason to keep watching your ad, the better. In fact, Meta encourages businesses to share a “hook” within the first three seconds of their video ads.

Use the Right Aspect Ratio

When you’re scrolling through your social media feed, you’ll almost always hold your phone vertically. Thus, 4:5 vertical videos or square video ads will cover a significant portion of the average viewer’s screen. (If you want to use different aspect ratios for different ad placements, Meta’s video cropping capabilities can help.)

Showcase Your Brand Right Away

In addition to sharing a “hook” during the first few seconds of your video ads, it’s wise to put your brand identity and products front and center ASAP. That way, people are more likely to see and remember your brand and its products/services—even if they don’t watch the entire video.

Metrics: The Key to Evaluating Video Ads

Like any other ad type, some Facebook video ads are more successful than others. Fortunately, Meta provides a large number of video ad metrics to its advertisers. With the help of this information, your ad agency will be able to analyze the performance of these advertisements in detail.

The metrics Meta offers for standard video ads include:

• Two-second continuous video plays
• Three-second video plays
• ThruPlays (the number of times your video ad was viewed in full)
• Cost per two-second continuous video play/three-second video play/ThruPlay
• Reach
• Amount spent
• Video plays
• Video plays at 25%, 50%, 75%, 95%, and 100%
• Video average play time

After a broadcast ends, Live videos can benefit from the metrics listed above and Messaging metrics such as:

• New messaging connections
• Messaging conversations started
• New blocked messaging connections
• Cost per messaging conversation started
• On-Facebook purchase

Get Video Ads From a Qualified Ad Agency

When handled with care, video advertising can be a boon to any business. After all, these ads can grab a potential customer’s attention quickly and tell them what they need to know about your brand within seconds. However, any form of social media advertising can be challenging for people who don’t fully understand this field—and video is among the trickiest ad formats to master.

This means that going the DIY route is rarely a good idea for companies looking to utilize this type of advertising. Instead, it’s wise to find a qualified ad partner who understands both national and regional markets for your brand. If you’re on the lookout for a North Carolina advertising agency that can help you with video ads and other social media marketing services, look no further!

At Social Ktchn, we know a thing or two about creating Facebook video ads—just watch the advertisements we’ve prepared for clients like Crazy Compression and BathPro. These are just two of our clients who are seeing double-digit ROAS, and we’d love to add you to the list. If you think your brand could benefit from polished video ads like these, reach out to us today!