Facebook video ads drive 2x more clicks and have a 69% higher success rate than images. Learn how to make your own killer video ads.
“I just think that we’re going to be in a world a few years from now where the vast majority of the content that people consume online will be video.”
Mark Zuckerberg, Barcelona’s Mobile World Congress, 2016
Facebook video ads are currently running as the most popular and effective marketing tool on the platform. Each month, 1.25 Billion viewers see videos on Facebook Watch. Not to mention the number of videos people scroll on their timelines daily. Strategically placing video ads on Facebook and Instagram can bring new customers and dramatically improve your brand awareness.
Video ads drive more engagement by getting around 2х more clicks than images. Also, they give marketers an opportunity to share the brand's identity and connect with viewers on a deeper emotional level, which can play a strong competitive advantage in the long term.
What are Facebook video ads?
Facebook video ads are paid ad placements that feature a video. It can appear in one of several predetermined locations on a user’s Facebook screen. From your Facebook account, you can create a new video advertisement or boost an existing post that includes a video clip.
Top-3 reasons to start using Facebook video ads
1. Facebook users love videos
For the past 5 years, Facebook has been heavily focusing on becoming the biggest ad-supported video platform. And Facebook users seem to support this trend. According to the Facebook report, 65% of Facebook users in the U.S. watch videos on Facebook daily. What’s more, they expect to watch even more videos on the platform over the next year.
The increasing popularity of video ads makes them an extremely efficient marketing tool on Facebook, as its users are used to engaging with this type of content organically.
2. Videos have the highest engagement rates on Facebook
Researches show that it has a higher engagement rate than any other type of content on Facebook receives. In a 2020 study, it was found that the average engagement rate per Facebook post across all industries was 0.27%. Facebook video engagement stats show that at 6.01%, video posts score above other categories like photo posts (4.81%), link posts (3.36%), and status posts (2.21%).
3. Conversion rates of Facebook video ads are higher
One of the most significant advantages of video ads on Facebook is that videos do not only attract new potential customers, they also encourage them to convert more efficiently.
Results of a poll by Databox show that 69% of marketers noted that video ads outperform other mediums as static visuals, images, and plain text ads on Facebook. Also, mobile accounts for more than 50% of Facebook’s ad revenue from video.
Still not convinced that video ads efficiently perform on Facebook? Check out our list of 9 Undisputable Benefits of Facebook Video Ads.
Facebook’s requirements for video ads
When you’re working on content specifically for a Facebook video ad, make sure to follow Facebook’s video requirements. Each type of ad comes with its own set of specifications.
For video ads, there are five essential rules:
- File type. There’s a wide range of file types. But it is recommended to use MP4, MOV, or GIF for video ad placements.
- Sizes & Specs. Facebook official recommendations say a 4:5 ratio is preferable for in-feed ads to popular horizontal (16:9) and landscape (9:16) modes.
- Video length. Facebook video ad length should be from 1 second to 241 minutes for in-feed ads.
- Max file size. 4 GB for all placements.
- Minimum resolution. 1080x1080px for all placements.
Moreover, for detailed information about sizes & specs for video ads, check out this Sizes & Specs Guide for Facebook Advertisers.
How to make Facebook video ads - best practices
- Set clear marketing objectives. Decide on the purpose of the ad: increase brand awareness, drive conversions, etc. After that, choose your KPIs in Conversion, Engagement, and Audience Reach categories and plan accordingly.
- Choose a target audience. The numbers about audience reach don’t directly correlate with the number of conversions. Thus, choosing a hyper-targeted group of people for your ad's audience is one of the keys to a successful Facebook video ad campaign. Reaching only relevant people will drive more video views and a higher CTR. This is why Madgicx’s Audience Studio tool is critically important to use when searching for your target audience on Facebook.
- Plan the video creatives. Creating high-quality content is crucial for the success of an ad campaign as it’s the main part of the whole work that your audience will see.
- Shoot a video. This part of the plan, along with the planning of creatives, can be challenging for people that have never worked with ads before. Therefore, outsourcing it to professionals like Perfomante saves time, money, and nerves because you’ll get stunning creative videos in time for any business goals of your ad campaign.
- Set up a Facebook campaign. This is a relatively straightforward process if you’re creating a regular ad campaign on Facebook. You can find step-by-step guides on Ads Manager that you just have to follow. Before publishing an ad, double-check all optimization metrics, and then you’re good to go.
- Track and evaluate your campaign. For your first campaign, go into the Ads Manager, choose "Campaigns," and see how well your ad performed. However, if you want to dig deeper into the analytics, you can use Madgicx’s One-Click Report. It provides you with detailed information about all hidden and known metrics and directs you towards revenue-driving decision making.
- Improve. After the analysis is done, it’s time to do it again! Create a dataset of your previous campaigns, which is big enough to make data-driven decisions about creatives, tracking metrics, and KPIs that will drastically improve the performance of your future campaigns.
Facebook video ads examples that convert
Monday.com
This Facebook ad is brilliant because it mentions elements of brand identity (logo and name) in the first few seconds. Moreover, the colors and music correlate with a corporate tone of voice that is energetic, bright, fun, and productivity-driven, so the user gets an idea about both the brand and the product promoted in the ad.
Nike
This Nike ad has made a lot of noise in 2020. It is compelling because the company showcased its celebrity partners struggling with many ordinary people's problems. When you're fighting in the first 2 seconds to get people to stop scrolling, showing famous athletes is an effective tactic.
If you’re searching for inspiration and can’t find unique, unconventional ideas, here’s my list of top-20 ideas for creating Facebook video ads.
Instead of conclusion: don’t be intimidated by Facebook video ads
Ultimately, creating Facebook ads is an important marketing tactic to consider. You can reach a lot of people in your audience, find the most loyal audience, and build a strong relationship with your customers - all of which help strengthen the position of your brand in the market.
At the core, people get more attached to authenticity in advertising. You can shoot and edit a video from your phone and make an authentic UGC video ad, or ask specialists in performance video to help you out with a script, creatives, or the whole video production.
Running poor creatives can result in high CPMs, wasted months of testing, and more. Use Madgicx’s Creative Suite to ensure your ad production workflow can bring you maximum profits starting today.
Serafima is a creative content marketer with 7+ years of experience in digital marketing. She's currently running as Head of Content at Perfomante, a performance video production agency working on 2D, 3D, and UGC-powered videos.