The Ins and Outs of Facebook Video Ads

If you’re paying for Facebook Ads, video needs to have a place in your campaign. Believe it or not, Facebook itself will proudly tell you that people spend up to five times as long looking at a video ad as opposed to static content.

When you’re talking about human beings with ever-shortnening attention spans, that’s more than a big deal. It’s game-changing.

And mixing video into your campaign doesn’t have to be intimidating. In fact, it can be remarkably simple. Here are our tips for getting started.

Get to the Point

In Facebook Ad land, 10 seconds spent introducing yourself is 10 seconds too long. If you don’t get to the point immediately, people are just going to keep scrolling.

Think of the way you browse Facebook. If you’re like most of us, you’re scrolling through in desperate search of something that’s actually entertaining or somehow worth knowing.

Even an ad may satisfy that need. But you’re never going to know if the advertiser spends the first part of their video spewing out information that’s not directly relevant to you and your needs. By the time they get to the point, you’ll be long gone and their ad dollars will be going to waste.

Start your video by explaining exactly what kind of value you’re offering to the viewer if they stick with you. Do that and your watch rates will skyrocket.

Be Brief

Sometimes, even seeing that a video is more than a couple minutes long will encourage people to skip out on watching it at all.

Why? Because they’re probably not comfortable enough with the idea that you’re actually going to make watching the whole thing worthwhile.

This is especially true if this is the first time someone’s ever encountered your brand. Try to get your message out in under a minute. If someone wants more info, they’ll come to you for it.

Utilize Visuals

Great Facebook video ads are highly visual. Why? Because you can expect about 8 in 10 of the people watching to be doing so with their sound turned off.

Sure, you might be able to compel them to turn the sound on, but you still need to cater to those who don’t if you want to be sucessful.

Yes, you can and should use subtitles. But more than that, you should make the video an engaging watch. If it’s possible to use visual elements to convey your message, DO IT!

Don’t Make a Commercial

Commercials are annoying. They’re disruptive, aggresive, and annoying. They’re not there to offer you some kind of value – they just want to annoy you into remembering them when it comes time to buy their product.

Commercials don’t fly on Facebook because we can choose to scroll right past them or skip them (sometimes.)

If you think a commercial will benefit you at all as a Facebook Ad, you’re pretty much completely mistaken.

But if your video shouldn’t be a commercial, what should it be? That depends on your goals. Just remember this – it has to offer some kind of value. Information we want, entertainment we crave…something we WANT to see.

This doesn’t mean that you can’t promote your services. It doesn’t mean that at all. It just means that when you do it, you have to be sensitive to how you do it.