How To Run Facebook Videos Ads In 2024

A lot has changed over the past year or so, including the introduction of Meta…The new parent company to Facebook, Instagram, Whatsapp and more.

Meta has actually made it easier to manage video ads and reach more people.

Unfortunately some aren’t saying the same for Apple’s privacy update.

But it’s not the end of the world – far from in fact.

It simply means that what worked a few months ago, probably won’t work now.

Either press play on the video below or continue reading to find out how all these ‘scary’ updates can actually work to your advantage.

 

So what has changed over the years?

Firstly, the apple update: giving users the option to opt out of being tracked across platforms.

Facebook used to be able to track the movements you made on other apps and websites.
Whatever your personal opinion on the matter, it enabled businesses and marketers to reach the audiences that were most likely to engage with their products, services or brand.

Facebook could serve ads to their users that they are most likely to be interested in – now this is the bit that hasn’t changed.

Although this update from Apple means that marketers can no longer be really really detailed with who they want to target and they can’t track and optimise ads in the same way, there is still a way to deliver ads to a specific, potentially high-converting target audience. And actually it requires less work from you.

Before I go any further, I wanted to point out that I’m going to refer to Facebook throughout this video but all the tips, of course, apply to instagram as well.

Facebook loves Facebook

All social media platforms want to make sure that their users stay on their platform for as long as possible.

And of course, Facebook has always been no different.

And while they didn’t have complete control over this just a year ago, it now makes complete business sense for brands to keep their users on the platform.

So the first big tip is to make sure that your converters stay within Facebook.
As soon as they leave, Facebook can’t follow them and see what they do. This means you have no way to attribute conversations or sales to Facebook ads, making ROI even harder to prove. Good luck explaining that one to the boss.

So, if you’re seeing this in your analytics already, it’s probably time to steer away from driving ad viewers to your own website, these ad types are also known as conversion-objective ads.

If you want your users to ‘convert’, whatever that may mean to your business, you want to do your best to complete this conversion on the Facebook app.

If you’re an ecommerce store, for example and your goal is to boost sales, you should be looking to utilize the Facebook and Instagram shop feature.

However, pretty much every business using Facebook ads can benefit from turning their attention to creating lead generation ads.

Use The New Lead Generation Ad

So the next big tip is to use this older, pre-existing ad type that you’ve probably ignored in the past.

Hear me out…

They’ve had this ad type for a while but it’s actually much more helpful now because it’s the best way to get customers to stay on facebook whilst building and collecting leads.

It wasn’t the most popular ad type in the past because Facebook always thought it was doing its users a favour in auto-filling the email address using the address they used to sign up to Facebook.

But I mean, I’m not sure what email address you were using 15 years ago…but I can bet it’s not the one you’re using now!

Thankfully, the user can now manually enter their best email address without leaving the Facebook platform. Meaning you can build your email list and drive conversions directly from the ad, making tracking much easier to manage.

These ads are currently showing the best results for the lowest costs and you can collect the best contact email address for that person, making your email list more useful than it would have been in the past.

But it doesn’t have to just be emails, you can have people contact you, set up a call or book a table at a restaurant.

Essentially because all this is happening on Facebook, you can track the genuine success and effectiveness of the ad.

Now what about the type of content?

Video

Let’s be honest, video is the standard. Videos are ideal for use as ads because they perform better and you want to put your precious budget against the content that’s going to be the most engaging and ultimately, deliver.

Now most panic when they hear ‘video’ – they think ‘expensive & time consuming’ but this certainly doesn’t need to be the case.

I’ve popped a link in the description to support my point, but here are a few of the most important tips for creating video ads:

Keep your branding consistent – use the same brand guidelines/colours and font that you would use on your website and other branded content. This is particularly important if you go down the route of raising brand awareness. You want to make your brand as recognisable as possible across all touch points.

Video length – the first of many mobile video ads tips that Facebook offers, is that you should keep your video ads closer to 15 seconds.

Stories are 15 seconds so this ensures that your ads are perfectly formatted and it increases the eligibility of in-stream placements. Our attention spans are also limited so you want to be able to get your message across as quickly as possible. So when writing the script for the video ad, make sure to tell them what it is you’re advertising, the benefit and end with a Call To Action to ‘click’ link sticker.

And remember captions – videos in both Facebook & Instagram’s feed autoplay on silent. SO to ensure that your video communicates your message no matter how the user wants or needs to access it, you should generate captions. Facebook can do this automatically using the voiceover or person talking in the video. But to avoid any errors, you can also burn captions into the video file using a free app.

Stories & Reels vs Feed

Of course, the length of the video depends really on where the video is intended.

For example, if you create a portrait 15 second video, you can use this video across both stories and reels.

You’re also going to get further reach for less money because Meta is experimenting with these types of videos.

As the head of Facebook says, ‘Instagram is no longer a photo sharing app’.

For example, unlike stories, Reel ads aren’t defined in terms of where they’re shown. Story ads show up between our community’s stories. However, reels show in both the reels feed and general news feeds which means even more reach.

With this in mind, you have the option to run 1 ad and tick to show this as a Reels ad, Insta story and Facebook story, meaning one video can go much further.

Run Engagement ads

Facebook ads shouldn’t just be used to drive conversions, but also increase brand awareness and engagement with your brand.

For example, if you’ve created a video that you know will generate great engagement among your target audience this could be an ideal ad. It could be anything from tips and tricks videos to educational content.

Run some ads against these videos and track their performance. Facebook likes to see plenty of activity and engagement on the analytics so you can use this engaging content to build activity around posts that are most likely to be shared and interacted with. In turn, you’re increasing your overall account health.

Targeting

Now let’s consider targeting. Of course, this is the topic on everyone’s mind since the Apple update, but as I said, it’s possibly easier now than it once was to reach even more of your target audience.

Although you can’t be as descriptive with your target audience, the Facebook algorithm is built to optimize your ads to reach as many relevant people as possible, regardless of whether they can track users across other platforms or not.

All it means is that you want to expand your audience. It’s easier for you because the Facebook algorithm now knows more about your target audience than you do, simply by using their ‘Meta’ activity as a guide.

For example, if you’re looking to reach people who aren’t yet aware of your brand, you want to open the targeting up. The most laser focused you are, the less effectively the algorithm can do the job.

Although if you’d asked me the question this time last year I’d have been advising the opposite. Opening up your target audience will also help to make it as cheap as possible to reach as many people as possible.

When setting up your targeting, make sure that your projections show that your ad will reach a bare minimum of 500,000 – this may be different if you’re local as it might be smaller but ultimately this will enable you to reach people that you may not have realised would be interested in your offering.

You could also upload customer details to enable Facebook to create Lookalike audiences around location, age and gender. These are people who are similar to those that have bought from you in the past.

It uses the details of current buyers to find similarities and things they have in common. Facebook will then use this information to target others who may have never heard of your business, but have these things in common.

You can change the percentage of how alike they are to your lookalike audience, 1% which is the closest to your base audience, to 10%, which is of course 10x bigger but not as close to your audience. Remember that Facebook will do a better job with larger audiences so aim to target more than 4%.

Retargeting

As well as targeting new customers, you can run retargeting campaigns to target those people who are already engaging with your brand.

You can run an ad against anyone who’s been on your website, or anyone who has engaged with your content across Meta platforms. This means targeting anyone who has liked, commented and shared your content as these people are more likely to convert.

Contrary to popular belief, Facebook video ads have actually become easier to manage, as you can invest more time into the as content, and less into really clearly pinpointing the exact target audience. All to get more reach and conversions!

Click here to stay on top of the latest digital trends and find out more ways to leverage your digital presence this year to drive even more leads and clients.