Posted by
Kelly Morrow on
Jul 28, 2021
Creating Engaging Facebook Video Ads: Best Practices & Tips for Success
Catch your audience’s attention.
Video has become the premier way to consume content online. With the ability to fit lots of information into a short time-frame and easily catch consumers’ attention through movement, video ads present the perfect storytelling opportunity. While video is undeniably captivating, it can be difficult to stand out among competitors and design the right ads to meet your business goals. That’s why we’ve outlined some best practices for creating engaging Facebook video content.
Know Your Audience
The first step to creating engaging video content is identifying your target audience. Be sure to create a customer profile/buyer persona and tap into their demographics, interests, lifestyle, habits, and purchasing behaviors. You can then use this profile to create customized audiences within the Facebook platform.
Facebook offers an advanced web of targeting capabilities, including thousands of interests and retargeting capabilities from a variety of sources (i.e. website, video, Facebook events, Facebook & Instagram profiles, etc.).
Choose Your Ad Format
Facebook also offers the widest variety of ad formats to choose from. The FB/IG Newsfeed and Stories placements are the most-used options, but advertisers can also opt-in to leverage other placements, such as FB Search Results, Instant Articles, and the Audience Network (a way to show ads in apps outside of Facebook).
Pro Tip: For longer form videos (15s – 1min), consider using Facebook In-Stream and IGTV placements.
Keep Ads to Spec
In a mobile-dominated world, the days of 16:9 ads are long gone. When designing your video ads, think of how it will look on your mobile device (aka opt for vertical vs. horizontal dimensions). Below we’ve listed the most common ad sizes:
In-Feed: 1080×1350 or 1080×1080 (4:5 or 1:1 dimensions)
Stories & IGTV: 1080×1920 (9:16 dimensions)
In-Stream: 1920×1080 or 1080×1080 (16:9 or 1:1 dimensions)
Follow Best Practices
This sounds like a given, but you’d be surprised how many advertisers are unaware of Facebook’s best practices for video ads. Since consumer attention spans only average about 8 seconds, it’s important to keep video content short & fast-paced to get your message across quickly.
When thinking about how to structure video ads, again, think mobile-first. Traditional TV videos leave the hook and product shot for the end, but a mobile-first video should feature the product and hook within the first 3 seconds to grab users’ attention early. Social video ads should also always be designed for sound-off – utilize text, graphics, and captions whenever possible. Here are a few of our favorite examples of advertisers that properly used these best practices:
Oreo
In this ad Oreo perfectly adheres to best practices by keeping the video short, using fast eye-catching movements, and seamlessly introducing branding within the first few seconds.
Colgate found a clever and subtle way to bring attention to water conservation. Again, following the best practices with prominent branding and a fast-paced story.
For longer in-stream videos, Mercedes Benz does a great job of capturing a more TV-style story but within Social Media best practices. Their logo is introduced very early, and they make great use of text callouts to design for sound-off listening.
Intel’s battery life ad also complies with Facebook’s recommended practices: fast, eye-catching, informative, uses captions for sound-off, branding upfront, you get the gist.
Even the slightest movement can capture users’ attention.
Now that we’ve covered the importance of and best practices of video ads, it’s time to start creating. If you need help crafting your brand’s story and creating engaging Facebook ads, let us help! With experience working with all industries and National Brands, our creative agency can bring any story to life.