Facebook Unveils Vertical Videos: Here’s What You Need to Know

This month, Facebook is rolling out its new vertical video capability. This means, vertically oriented videos that were previously featured as 1x1 squares in news feeds can now be viewed as 2x3 rectangles to optimize the mobile user experience.

This adaptation functions to garner greater user engagement by increasing the amount of space utilized on the mobile screen. Below is a comparison of the two types of videos (1x1 vs. 2x3) to demonstrate how they appear on the mobile screen.

Mobile users tend to hold their phones vertically and multi-task while viewing content, which makes it necessary for brands to serve advertisements that accommodate this human behavior. Snapchat, the champion of vertical video, has capitalized on this approach and brands have benefited from its platform. Snapchat’s vertical videos provide more immersive experiences, which result in more completed views, so it’s only logical that Facebook follows suit and forages its own path in the news feed setting.

The vertical video effort reinforces the importance of making advertising and messaging channel specific. If you haven’t already seen it, BBDO’s Project Thumb Breaker offers a set of guidelines to create videos that are ideal for the news feed setting. The guidelines take into account all aspects of the mobile user experience (i.e. real estate on the screen, news feed scroll, lack of volume) and provide tactics to create a video that will grab a viewer’s attention early on in the process.

Brands should continue to follow Thumb Breaker’s approach and evolve with the new vertical video option. As Facebook migrates toward a more video-centric platform through this update, brands should take advantage of the opportunity to design videos that creatively use the space and make a lasting impact with consumers.