How to Create Successful Facebook Video Ads (+ Tips and Examples)
How to Create Successful Facebook Video Ads (+ Tips and Examples)
No need to be James Cameron or Martin Scorsese to get public attention. Today, e-commerce store owners and marketers can create successful video ads that capture viewers' attention and encourage them to take action. Video marketing is one of the most effective ways to communicate with your target audience. In fact, viewers remember 95% of a message when they watch it in a video, compared to 10% when they read it as text.
With video, you have more creative freedom when it comes to conveying your message. Amazing pictures help you tell stories that delight and attract like never before.
One way to get videos in front of a more relevant audience, attract viewers to chat in a messaging bot, and increase ad revenue is through Facebook video ads.
From comedy creators to user-generated content, here are a number of examples to help you create successful Facebook video ads.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
What are Facebook video ads?
Why Facebook video ads are important
How to create a Facebook video ad
Seven tips for high-performing Facebook video ads
Examples of Facebook video ads
Get the most out of Facebook video ads
What are Facebook video ads?
If you're wondering how to advertise on Facebook and how to overcome confusion, Facebook video ads are exactly the tool you need to succeed. Facebook video ads are promotional content that appears in viewers' feed, stories, or while they watch another video.
Paid advertising on Facebook helps you showcase your product or service to new audiences and can help with your company's overall video marketing strategy. You can create videos using Facebook's ads tool “Ads Manager” or using solutions with people pointing to the messenger bot to start a conversation and encourage conversion.
Why Facebook video ads are important
The video continues to rise in popularity and syncs with social media platforms such as Facebook. Consumers are watching more videos than ever before. Even the average person is expected to spend 100 minutes each day watching videos online by 2021.
In short, there's never been a better time to use video marketing:
- 78% of people watch online videos every week, and 55% watch online videos every day. (HubSpot)
- 92%
Users who watch videos on mobile phones will share them with others. (Virtuets)
- Social media posts that contain videos get 48% of views. (HubSpot)
Here's why Facebook is one of the best (if not the best) platforms to deliver your video ads:
- 69% of adults in the United States use Facebook. (Lyfe)
- The average user spends about 20 minutes each day on each visit to Facebook channels. (Infodocket)
- 51% of Millennial Americans can't stay 5 hours without checking Facebook. (Pew Research)
- Facebook has over 8 billion video views per day. (TechCrunch)
- 75 million people visit Facebook's video platform every day. (Adweek)
With Facebook video ads, you'll also gain new strategies to bring more benefits to your company. For example, you can include a link in your post that sends users to the messaging bot (we call it a click-to-message ad).
From there, you can do several things depending on the video presentation. Let's say a video is an ad for your new product. In a messenger bot, you can send potential customers a link to your site's product page via messaging.
Or, you can provide personalized recommendations by asking the customer to answer questions related to their purchasing preferences. Using this Facebook marketing strategy, you can then send them to a product page selected based on the information collected, providing them with a fast and personalized shopping experience.
Here are the other key benefits of using video ads on Facebook:
- Accurate targeting: Facebook ad targeting allows you to use Facebook's “Ad Manager” tool or “Solutions” to create a custom or similar audience to reach people who may be interested in your product or service.
- Attention grabbing: Thanks to Facebook's autoplay feature, when users browse their news feed, the video starts playing automatically. This helps you get their attention. To install it, you'll need engaging content for your video.
- Effective retargeting: You can use a custom audience in Solutions to retarget people who watched a certain percentage of the video and show them another ad.
How to create a Facebook video ad
No need for complicated programming, you too can get your ad started quickly. “Solutions” has a built-in Facebook ad tool that allows you to upload video content. You don't need to navigate far from the platform to complete an ad campaign.
To create a Facebook video ad using “Solutions,” follow these simple steps:
- Go to
I have growth tools in your dashboard
- Click “Create a new ad campaign” and choose your favorite ad type. The “Messages” option is best if you want to direct users to the messaging bot, while the “Traffic” option is perfect for directing users to your website.
- Select “Set up a new ad” where you can specify who this ad will reach and where.
- Choose the destination of the message. You have two options:
- Sponsorship - This option allows you to send promotional messages outside of Facebook's 24-hour time rule.
- Click to message - your ad will appear in the news feed for users and when they click it, they will be taken to messaging.
- Select a custom audience, a similar audience, or create a new audience. If you need to create a new audience, Solutions connects to Facebook and lets you populate users based on their location, language, behavior, and interests.
- Choose the location of your ad. Editing the place instead of allowing the platform to choose the place yourself gives you more control over the ad location.
- Select the device type: desktop or mobile. Choose the latter option and your ad will be optimized for mobile phones to ensure it loads properly for viewers. Since 40% of online transactions are made using a mobile device, you might want to choose a mobile phone to satisfy potential customers.
- Split your daily budget and create an ad schedule. If you don't allocate enough money, “Solutions” will alert you. You can choose to run your ad continuously from a specific day or set a start and end date.
- Create your ad. Here's where you can upload your video along with an attention-grabbing title. Solutions also allows you to include a call to action (CTA) and offers built-in options to make this easier.
- Create a subscription message. If your goal is to attract subscribers through video, you can create a subscription message that will appear when a user enters a message. You can also create buttons to offer new options for users to choose from, such as visiting your website or activating a free trial.
- Confirm your ad details. You can preview it in “Solutions” and wait for Facebook to approve it. This can take anywhere from five minutes to a day
N.
If you want to create video ads in Facebook's Ads Manager, read Facebook's guide on how to create a video ad.
Want to get a higher return on investment from Facebook video ads? Start using “Solutions” today. It's free to start.
Seven tips for effective Facebook video ads:
1. Follow Facebook video ad specifications:
Before we talk about how to create a Facebook video ad, let's take a look at seven tactics you can use to increase engagement and conversion:
2. Follow Facebook video ad specifications:
It's easy to get caught up in the creative side of creating video ads. We often forget the technical aspect. Video ad specifications ensure that your content looks professional and increases the return on investment of your ads.
For video ads in your news feed, use the following guidelines:
- Recommended file type: MP4, MOV, or GIF
- Ratio: 4:5
- Resolution: at least 1080 x 1080 pixels
- Audio and subtitles: optional, but recommended
- Duration: 1 second to 241 minutes
- Maximum file size: 4 GB
- Minimum width: 120 pixels
- Minimum height: 120 pixels
- Text: 125 characters
- Title: 40 characters
- Link description: 30 characters
If you plan to run video ads in other places such as Facebook Stories or Discover Instagram, the specifications may change. Check Facebook's Video Ad Specifications page for more information.
3. Include the translation:
Fifty-eight percent of Facebook videos are watched without sound. Why? Because people aren't always in a position where they can increase the sound. They may be at work, in a library, or at home next to a sleeping baby. In order to make sure that everyone can understand your content, include accurate text in the ad.
(The follow-up will be completed in the next answer)
4. Short and concise:
Wistia discovered that people usually watch more than 80% of videos that take less than 30 seconds. That makes sense: thanks to cell phone technology, we have short attention abilities. The sooner you can get to the point, the less likely viewers are to lose interest.
5. Mention your brand within the first three seconds:
Facebook recently found that consumers are 23% more likely to remember your brand if the brand name or logo is displayed in the first three seconds of a video.
6. Include a strong call to action:
You've created great video content, but what do viewers do after they've finished watching? Help your viewers navigate to the next steps with a powerful call to action. You can direct them to your messenger bot or take them to your product details page to help them take action — and help you achieve your marketing campaign goals.
7. Personalize your video:
“Personalization makes the relationship between the company and the customer seem humane,” says Jia Wertz of Forbes. You might consider using a platform like Hippo Video or idomoo to offer more intimate experiences by integrating customer data and video.
8. Measure your ad performance:
You'll never know how your video ad will perform if you don't monitor your video statistics. Understand return on investment and engagement levels as you gain perspectives on how to optimize for future ads.
Examples of Facebook video ads:
Need some inspiration to get your creative juices flowing? Look no further. Here are five examples of engaging Facebook video ads that made a big impact:
Beekeeper's Naturals
Beekeeper's Naturals wanted to increase orders for its product “Beegan Pharmacy” sample box to increase the value of an average order. The company created a video ad offering a 10% discount to viewers who switched to Messenger.
This video was very effective in increasing orders thanks to accurate guidance - people who visited the company website in the past 30 days and left their shopping cart abandoned could see the video.
By specifically targeting customers who had previously shown a genuine interest in the product, Beekeeper's Naturals Facebook video ad was able to achieve:
39% increase in bundle purchases
4.5-fold increase in ad revenue on spend
To learn more about this example.
Corona Canada
The goal of Facebook video ads for Corona was to encourage people to consider the Corona beer brand as a brand that cares about people, society and the world.
The company created a series of video ads for the Corona beach cleaning campaign, and each video was focused on the geography of specific cities to make them more personalized. Moreover, to achieve cost efficiency, Facebook's marketing team has allowed Facebook to automatically allocate the larger budget to the most performing ads and automatically select the best viewing sites, also based on performance, for all types of ads.
Thanks to these smart decisions, the video ad campaign has produced fruitful results:
A 2.3 point increase in Corona's link to a message about cleaning Canada's beaches
Save 35% in the cost per person to link to a positive message
9.2 point increase in ad recall
4.2-point increase in the intention to buy Corona products
To learn more about this example.
Michael Stars
The clothing store Michael Stars wanted to test whether Facebook video ads are more effective than display ads in generating sales.
The company has developed and compared two separate campaigns with the same budget and timeframe: one featuring photo ads and the other video ads.
It also benefited from Facebook's advanced video ad features, such as automatic distribution, budget optimization, and automatic advanced matching (activities on the site are anonymously matched to customers on the site).
By using these automated features for its video ads, Michael Stars achieved better cost efficiency than its display ad campaign, which produced the following results:
3% decrease in purchase cost
11% increase in return on ad investment
To learn more about this example.
Luca and Danni
Jewelry maker Luca and Dani sought to raise brand awareness through Facebook video ads by focusing on brand elements with a call to action.
The videos featured beautiful shots of the products in the studio to attract viewers' attention, and were shown to a dedicated audience: people who added items to shopping carts or made purchases. It also targeted a similar audience to find potential new customers.
To measure ad performance, a study was conducted using two groups: people who viewed ads and people who didn't. The first test group turned out to have significantly better results in terms of increased brand awareness and advertising memory. Overall, the video ad campaign produced the following:
4-fold increase in sales conversion rates
30-point increase in ad memory
24-point increase in brand awareness
1.8-fold increase in return on ad investment
To learn more about this example.
Thinx
Thinx decided to use Facebook video ads to raise brand awareness, playing a sexy message about what would happen “if men who consider themselves bisexual have periods.”
The company has created short videos addressing this exciting topic while providing written subtitles so viewers can understand the content without the need for audio. The video ads were shown to a wide audience of people with periods in the United States as well as an audience that looked like them.
For those who watched the video, Thinx reached out to them, asking them to answer questions to get their attention and attract them to specific landing pages on the website where they could buy underwear products.
Thinx conducted a study on raising brand awareness using Facebook's branding methodology to measure the results of its campaign to raise brand awareness. The results showed the following:
19-point increase in ad memory
8.5-point increase in brand recognition
7.5-point increase in message engagement
30% increase in traffic
68% increase in new website visitors
Learn more.
Get the most out of your Facebook ads
What business goals will you achieve using Facebook video ads? Remember these basic tips for creating compelling, engaging, and effective videos:
Include written translations
Keep the video short and concise
Mention your brand within the first three seconds
Include a strong call to action
Customize your video
Measure the performance of your video ad
Get the most out of your Facebook ad spending with solutions. Start for free today.


