What Facebook video ads in the newsfeed is expected to look like on mobile. Image courtesy of Nanigans.
Facebook video ads launched years ago, but lately there’s been a lot of hype about them. What’s so special about this next wave of Facebook video ads? We’ve decided to investigate.
The latest round of video ads, which launched with corporate advertising partners earlier this month, will begin to appear in newsfeeds two to three times a day in late April or early May.
Facebook video ads: What’s all the hype about?
The big difference with this round of video ads is that these ads will autoplay in your newsfeed. This means as you’re scrolling through your newsfeed the ads will begin to play, no matter what. Does this mean if you’re secretly scanning your newsfeed in a not-so-entertaining meeting you’ll be caught the moment the video begins to play? Thankfully (from a user experience), no. Videos will begin to run silently. In the same way Instagram videos play, users must activate the audio. From a marketing perspective, advertisers are tasked with making a silent video interesting enough for people to choose to listen to and watch.
Facebook video ads: What are the updates?
Facebook added some updates to this release of video ads. To keep in mind the short attention spans of web video viewers, these videos spots will be fifteen seconds long forcing advertisers to be more creative. To compare with television advertising, marketers will be able to choose what time of day an ad appears. Where Facebook out performs TV is the ability to cap a promotion’s reach and frequency. This means marketers aren’t dealing with GRPs; they can say specifically how many times they would like users to see their video advertisement. Facebook’s highly specific targeting options will not initially be available for video ads, but they will still allow advertisers to be more specific than TV with options like age, sex, mobile device, social connections and CRM/email targeting.
The Amazing Spiderman 2 hits theatres in May 2014. It’s unsure if this film will use Facebook video advertising, but the first round of advertisers are likely to be movies.
Facebook video ads: What can I expect to see?
The social media giant recently rolled out ads on Instagram and kept their promise of making ads engaging. Facebook is interested in having video ads that are “funny” or “meaningful.” To keep this promise to users Facebook hired Ace Metrix, which will have a sample group of about 500 viewers who reflect the American population. These viewers will score the ads by how much they like them, and only videos with a high score will show up on Facebook.
With the hefty price tag of $1.5 million to $2.5 million per day, expect to see major brands being the forerunners with this new tool, with the first couple of ads likely to be for major motion pictures.
At the end of a video, viewers will see a video carousel (similar to Google search results) displaying similar videos to watch. If users don’t want to watch the video they can continue scrolling through their newsfeed.