Latest Trends for Facebook Video Ads 2021

Facebook advertising is one of the most powerful marketing tools available to brands today, but there are many ways to use this amazing platform unsuccessfully. Keeping the following best practices in mind will ensure that you achieve success and resonate with your audience.

1.   Experiment Consistently

Testing your video campaigns allow you to get unique insights and find new ways of achieving your business goals. Try doing A/B campaigns to test offers, creative, etc.

2.   Be Aware of the Latest Trends for Video Creative

Digital video has never been so popular which provokes fierce competition and so video creators are constantly coming up with new ideas.

3. Optimize for No Sound

According to Facebook, nearly 80% of users watch videos without any sound. People have gotten used to scrolling their feeds and watching Facebook videos on the go. Make sure viewers are able to understand your messaging without ever turning the sound on. Adding subtitles to Facebook video ads increases view times by 12% on average.

4. Create Video Content Specifically for Smartphones

More than half of all digital video traffic is from smartphones and tablets. That’s why it makes sense that you should create videos with mobile as your No.1 priority. And since 95% of Facebook users access the platform on mobile devices, Facebook video advertisers would be wise to make mobile video their number one priority.

5. The First 3 Seconds Are the Most Important, So Make an Immediate Impression

Viewers don’t watch videos for too long. That’s why most Facebook video ads are short. Desktop users need around 2 to 3 seconds to form a positive or negative opinion of an ad, while mobile users need only 0.4 seconds. That’s why you need to capture viewers’ interest as quickly as possible. This effect is even more noticeable with Facebook and Instagram Stories ads. In other words, you need to get your message out as soon as possible in the video or people will click away before they even know what your ad is about. With such short Facebook video ads becoming the industry standard, when do you have time to promote your brand? Facebook found that consumers were 23% more likely to remember which brand made a given video ad if the brand was featured in the first three seconds and 13% more likely if the brand was featured after four. Brand awareness is one of the most common objectives in Facebook video advertising. If your marketing goal is to get your brand name out there, you’d better do it by the count of three or people will stop paying attention.

6. Standardize The Majority of Your Facebook Videos At 15-Seconds

Facebook recommends advertisers make videos that are 15 seconds or shorter, as people are more likely to watch them till the end. There’s also an increasing trend in mobile advertising toward making tight, snappy 6-second ads. Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg Stated that compared to 15- and 30-second ads, 6-second ads showed “higher brand metrics across the board”.

7. Optimize Your Ad Title and Description

If you want people to actually watch your Facebook video ads, you need an engaging title and description that tells people what they should expect to see. Your ad title and description feed information to Facebook’s targeting algorithms about the topic of your video, so make sure you include any keywords relevant to your ad. In addition to keeping your copy relevant, remember that not all titles are created equal. Some are simply catchier than others.

8. Check Your Facebook Video Ad Specs

If you don’t have the right Facebook video format, you’re not going to have the visual impact you’re looking for with your ad. Facebook has specific recommendations for formatting your video ads and so do follow them.

9. Make Sure Top Post Vertical or Go Square

Since we are on the subject of Facebook video ad specs, what aspect ratio should you use for maximum views and engagement? We recommend either 9:16 vertical videos or 1:1 – a perfect square which is the best option as they actually take up 78% more screen space than landscape videos. More screen space for your video means your visuals and text will grab more attention and be more likely to be seen. A case study from Buffer found that square videos got up to 35% more views and 100% more engagement than comparable horizontal videos.

10.  Insert Your Call to Action (CTA) in the Middle of Your Video

Video hosting company Wistia analyzed over 300,00 videos with CTAs and found that 95.9% had CTAs post-roll, 4% had them mid-roll, and only 0.1% had them pre-roll. Mid-roll CTAs had the highest average conversion rate at 16.95%, compared to 10.98% for post-roll and 3.15% for pre-roll. So while the trend for most advertisers is to put their CTAs at the end of their videos, your brand can get a competitive advantage by adding a call to action in the middle.

11.  What is Your Facebook Advertising Objective?

When creating your video and launching your Facebook video ad campaign, you need to have clearly defined goals in mind. Do you want to drive conversions? Do you want to increase traffic to your website? Or do you simply want to spread brand awareness? Ultimately, which objective you pick depends on why you’re making a video ad in the first place. For more in-depth info on picking the right ad objectives, check out this Facebook video marketing guide.

12.  Define and Measure your KPIs

It is critical to make sure you have determined the right KPIs based on your marketing objectives. The next step then is to measure and analyze how your ads are performing. Facebook offers analytics to help you understand how your video ads are performing, offering analytics such as clicks and click through rate (CTR), ad recall lift etc. If your objective is to drive sales, track conversions and conversion rate (CVR) on your website, you will need to install the Facebook Pixel. This will then allow you to know how many sales your video ad is generating and what percentage of users that saw the ad made a purchase because of it.

13.  Make Sure To Select the Right Facebook Video Ad Type for Your Campaign

Facebook video ads are so much more than just sponsored videos in News Feed. In 2019, there are a wide variety of video ad formats you can choose from to tell your story in the most effective way possible. For example, you can post looping GIFS, vertical video ads, video carousel ads, Facebook Stories ads, canvas ads, collection ads, sponsored live videos, sponsored 360 videos, or in-stream ads. Which one you select should be based on your marketing objectives and the length of your video content. And note that these options are always increasing. Tomorrow may bring a new option to consider.

14.  Facebook Video Ad Targeting

For the most part, targeting Facebook video ads is very similar to targeting Facebook ads in general. For example, lookalike audiences and custom audiences can be very effective, precise ways to get your video ads in front of the users that are most likely to appreciate them. Facebook video ads do have a unique targeting option where after you’ve run at least one video ad, you will have the ability to create an engagement custom audience based on video views. Essentially, this will let you retarget Facebook ads at any users who have watched your video content in the past. This is an excellent way to retarget users who have already engaged with your brand since you know they’re willing to view your content. Plus, if you’re running a campaign with multiple videos that are all related, you can promote your latest videos to users who have already watched the previous ones to craft a customer journey for them.

15.  Native Posting Works Best For Facebook

When it comes to Facebook video ads, you should exclusively upload them natively. Whatever the reason, native Facebook video seriously outperform shared video content from other networks. The benefits of posting natively are only amplified when it comes to video ads. In addition to the increased reactions, comments, and shares that come with Facebook native video ads, you can also target, optimize, and analyze your ad through Facebook Business Manager with far more precision.

Groove’s team of video marketing experts is ready to help you to craft the perfect videos to boost your online customer conversions.

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