Getting Started with Facebook Video Ads

You don’t have to blow your time and budget to create Facebook video ads that will outperform your static ads. With a little bit of know-how, Facebook Business Manager provides advertisers with the tools they need to produce streamlined and eye-catching advertisements.

Specs, Specs, Specs. Before getting started, it’s important to know the specifications of the ad type you’re creating. Each ad type has its own set of assets specifications, such as video minimum and maximum lengths, file size, aspect ratio and text length, that all uploaded ads should follow. For Facebook feed video ads, some of the specific specs include:

• Minimum video length of 1 second, maximum length of 240 minutes
• Video thumbnail must have less than 20% text overlay
• 4 GB max on file size

For all video creative specs and technical requirements for ads and placements, click here.

Know your Facebook objectives. When you create a campaign in Facebook Business Manager there are multiple objectives you can optimize your ad for. From reach to traffic to engagement there is an objective for any business goal you would like to achieve. While this is a positive, it is important that you know what all of the objectives are and which one you should optimize for so you don’t end up hindering your advertisement. Choosing the wrong objective can cause the ads cost per result to skyrocket. If you’re new to Facebook advertising, or would like more practice choosing the correct objective, check out Facebook’s eLearning courses on Facebook Blueprint.

Time is of the essence. According to Sprout Social, 47 percent of the value of from your ad is obtained in the first three seconds of the video. This doesn’t leave much time for you to establish what the ad is about and what you want your audience to do.

Make sure you have a clear key message at the beginning of your video to help your viewers retain the most important parts of your ad. Click To TweetAlso, make sure that your ad isn’t too long. Facebook best practices recommend that your video ad stays south of 15 seconds.

Have a Call to Action. You have their attention, now do something with it. Align your messaging and ad format to direct your viewers through the business funnel. If you want people to download your app, prompt them to do so in the video copy and add a “Download” call to action button to your ad. Or if you want to drive newsletter sign-ups add a “Sign Up” call to action button to your ad. Facebook Blueprint courses are helpful in learning more about which Call to Action buttons you should be using for your campaign, as well as how to add them.

Metrics matter. Knowing which of your ads are successful and the elements that made it successful, is important for communicating your value to clients and also recreating that success. Before you run a campaign, choose which metrics will be the most valuable to and customize your metric columns in Facebook Business Manager accordingly. Video ads have specific metrics, such as length of views (2 seconds, 3 seconds, 10 seconds), cost per 3 or 10 second views and number of people who viewed a certain percentage of your video.

Click here for a “This, Not That” List for Social Media Metrics.

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