With Facebook becoming one of the world’s leading video platforms, many brands are turning to Facebook to further build their audiences. Facebook has sophisticated advertising tools, so if you want to spend money advertising on Facebook it's important to understand the fundamentals of how to run effective video ad campaigns on their platform. Below we’ll go over some best practices and general statistics for video ads on Facebook.

Video Ad Campaigns On Facebook

By 2020, 75% of the world's mobile data traffic will be video. Currently, 1 out of 5 minutes spent on mobile devices in the US are on Facebook and Instagram, and Facebook alone reaches an audience of 2 billion people. These stats help make the case that it's important to develop an ad strategy optimized for mobile video on Facebook and Instagram.When selecting videos to use as ads, advertisers have the option to upload new content or to select an existing video from their library. On Facebook, advertisers can use videos of up to 120 minutes in length; on Instagram, videos can be up to 60 seconds long. On Facebook, all videos under 30 seconds will loop continuously up to a 90 second cap and videos over 30 seconds will return to the first frame with a play button icon once the video is over.

Facebook Audience Types

When creating ads on Facebook, you'll need to create a target audience for your ad. There are three types of audiences that you can create on Facebook: Core Audiences, Custom Audiences, and Lookalike Audiences.

Core Audiences: Core audiences are created from the data and information that people share in their Facebook profiles, as well as the way people behave and interact on Facebook. These audiences can target people based on location, demographics, interest, behaviors, and connections.Custom Audiences: Custom audiences are created from data that you own. With these audiences you can reach people based on imported contact information or target people based on their interactions with your website or mobile app. The two types of data used to create these audiences are CRM data (email addresses, phone numbers, first or last names, zip codes, cities, countries, iOS IDFAs, Android Advertising IDs, and app user IDs) and Intent data (pulled from people's behavior on your websites or mobile apps).Lookalike Audiences: Lookalike audiences target people on Facebook and Instagram who have similarities with people that have already interacted or showed interest with your brand, product, or services. To create a lookalike audience, you first need to create a "seed audience". Seed audiences can be created from any of the following sources: a custom audience, people who like your Facebook page, or your CRM database. Seed audiences need to have at least 100 people in them and should be made up of your best customers (i.e. people who make valuable purchases or frequently interact with your mobile app).

Facebook Video Ad Stats

While using mobile devices, people scroll through their News Feed 41% faster than they do on desktop devices. When videos start to autoplay on Facebook, people watch them for 16.7 seconds on average. This is similar with video ads, which are watched in the News Feed for an average of 5.7 seconds.Every separate mobile video placement (News Feed, Stories, Ad Breaks, TrueView) elicits different consumer expectations and behaviors. It’s important to understand each of these formats and create ads that are specific and customized for each different format. The 10-second ad break shouldn’t be the same video as a video in a feed that may only be seen for 6 seconds by the average viewer.

Facebook Audience Network & Video Ad Formats

Facebook’s Audience Network includes media organizations such as Viacom, iHeartRadio, Hearst, Time Inc, The Huffington Post, Tech Crunch, Mashable, and Univision. Over 1 billion people see an ad through Audience Network every month, so advertising via the Audience Network gives you access to 16% more people on average globally than on Facebook and Instagram alone. See the images below for stats and requirements for In-Stream ads on Audience Network.

Facebook Video Ad Formats in order from longest to shortest (In-Stream, Interstitial, Native):In-Stream: Can be desktop + mobile, pre-roll and/or mid-roll, and campaign objectives can include: brand awareness, reach, video views, conversion, engagement. Ads longer than 30 seconds can be skipped after 10 seconds as determined by publisher.Interstitial: Skippable at 3 seconds or 6 seconds as determined by the publisher.Native: Defined as “Ads that fit the look, feel, form and/or function of their surrounding content” and includes most Facebook news feed ads. These are “non-forced views” which means someone can scroll past the video if they do not want to view it.

Slideshow Ad Campaigns On Facebook

Facebook recently unveiled the ability for advertisers to use image slideshows instead of singular static images. The primary advantage of using an image slideshow over traditional online video is that slideshows requires less bandwidth and data to consume than standard streaming video. Therefore, advertisers can reach their audience in virtually any country, on almost any Internet-connected mobile device. Slideshows also cost less to produce and are faster to create, while still delivering much of the impact and effectiveness of videos.Slideshows are very easy to make and can be constructed either from photos or existing video creative. Advertisers can stitch together a series of 3–10 images to create a slideshow that becomes like a lightweight video on Facebook and Instagram. You can also choose to create a slideshow using stock images from the Facebook database. You can even add text overlay and audio to create a rich visual experience.Slideshows can also be created by uploading a video into the slideshow tool which automatically selects 10 image stills for you to choose from to build your slideshow. This can be combined with 2G targeting, so that viewers with more bandwidth can view a video, while those with low-bandwidth connections can still experience a video-like experience via slideshow.Reach out to us with any questions you have, and be sure to check out our other blogs on Facebook including: 360 Videos On Facebook, Live Streaming Video On Facebook, Facebook Video Features, &Facebook Video View Counts.