The Benefits of Facebook Video Ads

With mobile video consumption increasing by 100% every year, and the potential reach of Facebook ads at a huge 1.9 million users, it is no surprise that more and more businesses are keen to start - or step up - their Facebook video ads. Indeed, following the success of their competitors TikTok and YouTube, Facebook’s algorithm is placing more emphasis on video content. Even Instagram, known for its original mission “to capture and share the world's moments”, is no longer a square photo sharing app. Instead, as head of Instagram Adam Mosseri puts it, it is now a general entertainment and video platform. 

It’s clear that video content (and video advertisement) is more important than ever for businesses, but what are its exact benefits? How can it elevate your business? Is it worth increasing your ad spend for? These are all questions that we will begin to unpack in this piece, but there are some clear benefits before we even begin.

The benefits of Facebook video ads are:

1. Reach and engage your target audience.
2. Show off your product in ways not possible with static content. 
3. Increase brand awareness early on. 
4. Achieve highest possible return on ad spend.  
5. Gain invaluable performance insights and data.

1. Reach and Engage Your Target Audience 

With the potential reach of Facebook Ads at 1.9 million users, and a 37% increase in Facebook ad impressions, it is easier to reach and engage an audience. Pair that with the fact that you can target an audience based on specific criteria (like age, interests, location), and that Facebook shows your ads to people who will find your ads relevant, it is easier now, more than ever, for your brand to be seen by the right people. 

And the results speak for themselves: 84% of advertisers have said that video has driven traffic to their website, and 69% state that video ads outperform image and plain text ads on Facebook -- with the average engagement at 6.13%, and videos looked at for five times longer than static content.

You can even use Facebook video ads to get in contact with people who already know your business, whether they're loyal customers or people who have used your app or visited your website.

As long as your Facebook ad can grab the viewer’s attention within the first 3-5 seconds and get them to stop the scroll, you’re good to go. 

2. Show Off!

‍In fact, this is another benefit of Facebook video ads: you can put all of the information you want to include in an attractive package, and deliver it within just a few seconds. No matter how much information, or how complex, it is much easier (and more engaging for your viewer) to explain it with a visual than through static content -- and get them to stop the scroll.

As before, the results speak for themselves: 79% of the time, adding video increased the likelihood to buy a product, with an average increase of 12% in intent (and an increase of 26% for new buyers). Facebook in particular drives more than 80% of all social referrals to eCommerce sites.

3. Increase Brand Awareness

Not to mention that video ads can increase your brand awareness right from the start. Facebook found that early brand presence in mobile ads improves aided recall by 23%. Moreover, "in nine out of eleven lift studies (82%), video or video plus static creative outperformed static-only creative in boosting brand awareness, and in nine out of nine lift studies (100%), video or video plus static outperformed static-only in driving top-of-mind awareness."

4. Highest Return on Ad Spend

As a result, a successful Facebook video ad campaign can lead to an increase in your click-through-rate, which leads to an increase in your conversion rate - and a higher return on your ad spend (Facebook has the highest retail ROAS for any social platform). And that’s not all: video ads encourage customers to convert in a more efficient manner than other advertisements, with 94% of ad revenue coming from mobile users.

Need a Real-World Example? We've Got It!

#1: Huel

Huel partnered with Aura Ads to accelerate performance creative* production and drive better performance on paid social with direct response video ads. As a result, Huel saw a 10:1 return on investment, a 34% higher click through rate, and 50m global views. 

* Performance creative is like the intersection between campaigns that are driven by KPIs/ROI and campaigns that are driven by innovation and creativity. It is hyper-focused on the end results -- typically the call-to-action that your ad supplies for audiences. 

5. Gain Invaluable Insight

You will struggle to find analytics as good and thorough as on Facebook. Advertisers can track conversion and engagement metrics, which not only help you to monitor ad creative performance, but can also assist decisions made around budget allocation and the wider campaign. When using video ad creative, advertisers also unlock engagement metrics that are not accessible on static ads. For example, you can see how many people your video has reached, the % of your videos that have been watched, the number of times your video was played for 2 continuous seconds or more, and the number of times your video was played to completion - or for at least 15 seconds.

You can even build a custom audience based off these insights. This is because if Facebook tells you how your ad was watched and engaged with, you can use this data to create a new custom audience to retarget, nudging them towards making a purchase. For example, you can run a campaign to reach people who visited a product page but didn't complete a purchase to encourage them to go back to the website to do so. Or, you can create an audience of everyone who's visited your website in the past 30 days after clicking on your last video ad.

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We are Aura Ads, a unique performance creative agency designed for D2C eCommerce brands. We help clients sell more online and grow at scale with our bespoke video and static creative delivered on a monthly basis. 

Check out our blog on Facebook ad mistakes to avoid.