Facebook Advertising Objectives: Video Views
With more people online these days, now is a time to get more creative with the content you are advertising. It’s no surprise that recent events and a pandemic have swarmed the nation and overtook the attention of millions. But when your audience turns to a platform like Facebook, they are looking to see content that entices them, engages them, and easily distracts them from everything else they’re seeing.
In the past, we’ve discussed the Brand Awareness, Store Traffic and Reach objectives and have also outlined the Covid-19 effect on ads, and strategies to use during this time (part 1, 2, 3, 4, 5). More recently, Optimize Social Media covered how to strategize your content with videos. With that offering detailed insight on the benefits of running video ads, let’s discuss the Video Views objective.
What is the Video Views objective?
In short, the Video Views objective is one of the 11 offered by Facebook to drive consideration and awareness towards your brand and content. It is the one objective Facebook offers that fully optimizes for the viewing of your videos.
It’s important to note that you CAN run video creative under other objectives, as well as turn photos into a slideshow video, but this objective holds the sole purpose of delivering the video ad to an audience that is more apt to watch the video content.
There are two different optimization routes for Video Views campaigns — 2-Second Continous Video Views and ThruPlay — the latter being the standard, most commonly used. There are also many different Call-to-Actions that accompany this objective, too.
What is ThruPlay?
ThruPlay is the default optimization route on the Video Views objective. This optimization route allows the advertiser to only pay for views on the ad that exceed 15-seconds. The Facebook algorithm learns how to effectively and efficiently spend your budget to the right audience, only charging you for the ad views of 15-seconds+. It’s an extremely beneficial way to run a video ad at a cheap cost.
Like all other objectives, the Video Views objective allows you to specify a CTA button if you have a URL attached to the ad. The standard CTA options are available: Send Message, Book Now, Download, Get Quote, Learn More, Shop Now, Listen Now, Watch More, Sign Up, etc.
What Types of Features Does the Video Views Objective Offer?
As mentioned above, video creative can run under any objective. But some features under the Video Views objective aid in making your content more creative, unique, and help with its performance delivery.
Not only can you advertise a pre-made video or commercial your business is running, but you can actually create slideshows using multiple images and add different features to the slideshows, including text and color, effects, background colors, stickers and more.
The slideshow option also allows you to use music that is royalty-free. This is a fun way to spruce up your video ad and make it a more exciting experience for users. There is music offered by Facebook, or you are allowed to upload your own royalty-free music and audio.
There is also the option to create a video out of images, somewhat like the slideshow, just a limit on images and different templates offered, plus, no music is offered under this feature.
This “create video” feature allows you to choose a template and use up to six images. Some templates are limited to only two photos, some more. In this feature, a 15-second video will be created (with 6 images max in use). There are limited editing features available, but those include: adding a headline, changing the text font and position, and changing text color and background color. There is an option to add your brand logo, as well as a variety of stickers to add to different images in the video.
Is Video Views the best objective for me?
When you’re running a video ad, it can be a tough decision to decide whether to run it under the Video Views objective specifically or opt for another objective that optimizes to pull in different results.
When deciding to use this objective specifically, some factors to look at are cost and creative. If you want to run a video ad at a low cost, the Video Views objective is the best option for that. If you want people to watch your ad all the way through and have Facebook specifically optimize to drive those results, this objective is a great choice. If you want to have a variety of creative forms to use, Video Views is the best option for that, too.
Video Views can also be put in comparison to a commercial people are seeing while watching TV. You’re only paying for users to watch the videos all the way through which can be a significant advantage if you have a commercial or promotional video you’re interested in advertising for a certain period of time. Because Facebook allows advertisers to target a detailed market, you pay to deliver your ads to users that you specifically want to see your content. This holds a significant advantage over a traditional TV commercial because you control your audience. Taking your video ads to a social media platform gives you opportunities traditional platforms don’t.
With that being said, the content capabilities for videos on Facebook have a pretty great range. Because of the 15-second rule when it comes to Video Views campaign, Facebook actually favors shorter videos. Though longer videos are allowed and many do perform well, at OSM we have seen that shorter videos, in some cases, perform better than a longer one.
Another reason the Video Views objective is a key campaign component for video ads is that it does not require high-production-value videos. This means that a video with the lower-production budget, per-say a Smartphone video, or a quick simple promotion has the opportunity to perform really well with its delivery.
Below is a screenshot of a 15-second Video Views campaign we ran at OSM with a $130 budget. It spent only $.003 per ThruPlay and ended with a total ThruPlay count of 50,821 over a 90-day duration.
In contrast to the 15-second video, a 30-second Video Views campaign ran by OSM with a $185 campaign spent $.005 per ThruPlay, totaling 40,939 over a five-day duration.
Using the Video Views objective allows for cost control and wide-range creativity that can not only boost your online presence but drive potential sales to your business.
Optimize Social Media provides social media & reputation solutions that evolve with our clients. As social media experts we manage Facebook, Twitter, Google, Yelp, YouTube and Instagram accounts for our clients on a daily basis. We help the modern business owner implement a specialized social media strategy so that they can make more money in real life. Enjoy our blog.
