Facebook: “A” Grade – Social Ad Targeting
Paid advertising on social media properties is delivering a solid return on investment, according to marketers in a recent eMarketer’s report called “Social Advertising Effectiveness Scorecard: Industry Execs Grade the Leading Platforms.”
“The executives we interviewed said one of the key strengths of paid social media advertising is its targeting capabilities,” said eMarketer principal analyst Debra Aho Williamson.
“Marketers consider Facebook an extremely sophisticated targeted advertising platform, while Pinterest benefits from its strong connections with ecommerce and purchase intent.”
eMarketer asked executives from 29 companies to grade the “Big Three” social properties—Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter—and the “Emerging Three”—Instagram, Pinterest and Snapchat—in a range of categories, including creative capabilities, ad targeting, measurement and ROI.
Also noteworthy is the video ad category. Facebook’s entry into video advertising has created new opportunities for marketers, leading some to predict it could take ad dollars away from YouTube.
- Published in Facebook, Social Media Video, Video Advertising
Facebook Hits 8B Video Views Per Day
Facebook Hits 8 Billion Video Views/Day, Challenges YouTube
Did you know?
- More than 1 billion people use Facebook every single day
- 1.39 billion people now use Facebook on mobile devices, including more than 1 billion on Android
- There are 8 billion daily video views on Facebook
- More than 500 million people watch videos on the site daily
- In September 2015, over 1.5M small businesses posted video to Facebook, including native uploads and video ads.
Zuckerberg wanted to make it clear that Facebook is focused on investors, who are focused on advertisers, who are focused on reach – particularly mobile reach. It’s clear that he wants video advertisers to use “views” as a standard metric, even though comparing YouTube views and Facebook video views is like comparing apples to oranges.
Zuckerberg also stated that new video tools for Facebook pages are live, and that the site has been testing a dedicated video section. He confirmed that:
“Over the next few years, video is going to be some of the most engaging content online. And by continuing to innovate here, we have a chance to build the best place to watch and share videos”.
Yep, he just declared war on YouTube, which allows over a billion people to discover, watch and share originally-created videos. The big difference between the two is YouTube focus on helping people discover videos – and YouTube’s Content ID program, which ensures that what gets discovered are “originally-created videos.” Facebook is focused on watching and sharing videos.
Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook’s COO, shared a couple of more nuggets of news. She stated that revenue from mobile ads was up 73% year on year to $3.4 billion and grew 73% year-over-year. That means that mobile accounts for around 78% of Facebook’s total revenue from advertising. So, Facebook is focused on mobile.
“The average American adult spends 25% of their media time on mobile, and Facebook and Instagram together continue to account for over 1 in 5 minutes on mobile in the US”.
Mobile, mobile, and mobile. Get it? Got it? Good. Sandberg stated that Facebook was a good fit for marketers as it has “the best performing mobile ad products, and video is making them even better”. She believes that Facebook video gives the marketer a chance to reach a mass audience, with great cross device targeting and measurement”. “Our third priority is making our ads more relevant and effective. Carousel ads show multiple images, and now videos, and drive 30% to 50% lower cost per conversion than single-image link ads”.
Video marketers are indeed faced with a two-party system. According to eMarketer, global mobile ad spending is expected to be $72.1 billion this year, and Google’s share of this market is projected to be 33.7%, while Facebook’s share is forecast to be 17.4%. And, according to comScore, the Top 6 – and 8 of the Top 9 – apps in the U.S. are owned by Facebook or Google.
Today, some casual observers may mistakenly believe that it doesn’t matter whether you choose YouTube or Facebook video. But, there’s a big difference between YouTube’s and Facebook’s world view of video marketing and video advertising.
Facebook is primarily focused on advertisers. Facebook is focused on views – and says a “view” is reached at the three-second mark whether or not the viewer has even turned on the sound. In contrast, YouTube has a more balanced concern for partners as well as advertisers. YouTube also has a more balanced concern for giving viewers choice over which ads they watch and connecting brands with a more engaged audience. In fact, with TrueView ads, you don’t pay for random impressions or maybe-they-saw-its. The viewer has to choose to watch your video or there’s no charge. YouTube not only urges advertisers to go beyond impressions and clicks, it also offers Google’s Brand Lift solution to help them measure brand awareness, ad recall, and brand interest.
Finally, if you’re looking for a recent example of the impact of video ads, check out this one: P&G’s Gillette generated buzz for its latest razor, Gillette BODY, by targeting a rapidly expanding audience of body-grooming men. With a digital-first strategy anchored by YouTube TrueView ads, Gillette reached millennial males with their “100 Years of Hair” video ad.
The results: over 84% of the 13.5 million total viewers finished most of the video, there was a 211% lift in searches for the Gillette brand, and the video ad generated over 500,000 clicks to buy.
- Published in Facebook, Video Advertising, YouTube
Massive Opportunity – Facebook Video Ads
Massive Potential Awaits Canadian Advertisers With Facebook Video Ads
Canada loves it’s internet… and it’s social media. In fact, Canada was one of the first countries to fall head over heels for Facebook, and now, more Canadians log into Facebook every day than anywhere else in the world.
As a business owner, if you’re not reading this and immediately making the connection between where people are and where you should be… you should be.
What else is key to know? Facebook loves, loves, LOVES video content. Facebook video ads can be posted, watched, shared and engaged with, right within the platform. Facebook has watched this digital consumption evolution, and the social network is starting to further emphasize video’s importance and potential with Facebook Video Ads.
Facebook says it averages a billion video views every single day, with 2/3 watched via mobile. Facebook video views increased 50% between May through July 2014.
To highlight this milestone, Facebook said this week it’s going to start showing video view counts, offer deeper video analytics for publishers and will recommend additional videos to watch after you’ve seen one… all tweaks to increase Facebook Video Ad consumption by the public, and make the use of video more attractive to businesses.
All of this means even more potential for businesses and brands that use video in their marketing and advertising efforts… and highlights expansion in the digital video space beyond video giant YouTube.
Even Beyonce agrees.
Queen Bey’s Management Company said that Facebook has ‘become the primary platform’ they use to communicate with fans. This comes on the heels of a behind-the-scenes video released via both Facebook and YouTube last summer.
Beyonce’s Facebook video earned 2.4M views in a few hours while YouTube’s views trickled in by comparison, earning just a few thousand.
Why is this? Fans spotted the video, watched it, and then shared it with their friends… increasing it’s exposure via Facebook news feeds.
Facebook Video Ads also present massive potential for Facebook as a business (it also just bought video adtech company LiveRail for somewhere between $4-500M in July) but also for business owners. It’s an amazing way to get a message across and provides a more immersive experience vs static status updates and photo posts. This also goes for the success rates of graphic Facebook Ads vs Facebook Advertising that utilizes video. Video is the most powerful medium available today.
All of this could further convince advertisers who love the video aspect of television and the social aspect of Facebook… their money may be better spent on social video – and Facebook Video Ads might be a great place to start.
Are you ready to get your business on board with Facebook Ads? Contact Us today to get started.
Integrating BizBOXTV Video Production, Video Advertising & Video Marketing into your business strategy will be the best decision you make in 2015 – guaranteed.
- Published in Facebook, Lisa Ostrikoff - The Globe And Mail, Video, Video Advertising
Impact of Facebook Video Beyond View Counts
Facebook users are impacted by video ads even before viewing them for a full second, according to a Nielsen study commissioned by the social network’s marketing science team.
Facebook explained the motivation behind the study in a Facebook for Business post:
Online channels like News Feed changed how people consume content, giving them the power to decide what content (including ads) warrants their attention. If they don’t like what they see, they scroll past it. And even if they do stop long enough to see a video ad, people respond differently to videos. Some people see the video but don’t stick around to watch it. Others watch part of the video and move on. So how do you quantify the total value of a video ad online, where reach and views are often different?
Results show that from the moment a video ad was viewed (even before one second), lift happened across ad recall, brand awareness and purchase consideration. This means that even people who never watched the video but did see the impression were still impacted by the ad. And, as expected, lift increased the longer people watch the ad.
The data shows that people who watched under three seconds of the video ad created up to 47 percent of the total campaign value, and people who watched for fewer than 10 seconds created up to 74 percent, depending on the metric. That means that while lift continued to increase the longer people watched, people didn’t have to watch a whole video to be affected by the ad. Even video views under 10 seconds effectively build awareness and drive purchase intent.
Finally, Facebook provided the following takeaways for marketers:
As people consume digital content differently, it’s clear that video view counts alone don’t tell advertisers enough about the value driven from digital video ads. Marketers should experiment with shorter ad creative to drive value for their brand, keeping in mind that value increases the longer people watch. And as always, advertisers should continue optimizing ads for campaign goals, but going forward, they also need to look deeper than view counts to measure total campaign value.
Every part of a video view — from the initial impression to a complete video view and everything in between — drives value.
Understanding this helps advertisers build content and evaluate success.
- Published in Facebook
5 ways to make video ads that increase sales
If you’re a business owner already using online video to promote or advertise your business, congratulations. You’re ahead of the curve. But if you haven’t yet considered using video to broadcast your brand, you’re missing out. Why? Because using online video will not only improve your search engine rankings and provide an effective marketing tool available to a worldwide audience, but also leave a lasting impression on potential customers and increase your sales.
Here are five things to keep in mind when using online video for your business:
1. Tell a story. One of the buzzwords characterizing the shift away from pure selling is ‘storytelling.’ In Carmine Gallo’s The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs, she says, “the single most important thing to dramatically improve your presentation is to have a story to tell.” With online video, story-driven videos are becoming more and more popular simply because they’re effective; in fact, videos that engage viewers with a story are more likely to be shared, liked and commented on. Consider it an opportunity to visually recount your story and show potential customers something they wouldn’t be able to see anywhere else.
2. Get personal. If you’re a quirky business owner or your company has a killer corporate culture, let it shine. Standing out means being yourself, and highlighting what differentiates your business from others. And although speaking to a lens can be unnerving for newcomers, you’ll come across more naturally if the videographer asks you questions, rather than having you deliver hard line.
3. Boost views and conversions with clear calls to action . Effective online video educates and entertains, but what you also want to make sure it does is inspires the viewer to act. If your online video campaign is more about branding, make sure you include a clear call to action; whether it be visit your website and store, call a phone number, buy now or connect with you on social media. Before this, however, you want to make sure your video gets played in the first place. A recent study shows that using active calls to actions like ‘Click to Play,’ or ‘Learn More,’ can increase a video’s view rate by 12 times over passive labels like ‘Video’ or ‘Video Here.’
4. Go pro. While many business owners produce their first videos themselves, based on thousands of client experiences, it’s likely you’re going to pay a professional to re-do it once you realize it’s lacking narrative and polish. Save yourself the time and added cost, and work with professionals from the very start. Online video is arguably the best marketing tool at your disposal, and the ROI is unquestionable. Bottom line: just because you could do it yourself or hire an amateur, doesn’t mean you should. Has it been successfully done before? Sure, but it’s rare and usually because the personalities in the videos are bigger than the distraction that bad video is. Consider your video your first point of contact with your prospective client. Would you want that to be anything less than the quality and professionalism your business represents?
5. Share-ability and engagement. Videos shared via social media are consumed more than text-based updates, which means there is more potential for a company’s message to be shared and seen via these platforms. “Consumers are more likely to enjoy a brand video and remember the brand involved if they come across it because of a social media recommendation,” according to a recent report . So when you make the move into video for your business, make sure you keep your potential ‘social’ audience in mind.
A number of studies have come to the same conclusion: online videos help businesses sell to affluent consumers. Internet Retailer states, “those who view a video are 144 per cent more likely to place that item in a shopping cart. 52 per cent say watching video makes them more confident about their purchasing decisions.” One more stat if you still need to be convinced: comScore reports, “consumers who watch a video are 64 per cent more likely to make a purchase than those who don’t.”
What are you waiting for? Consumers are ready and waiting to click play on your business’s video content.
Lisa Ostrikoff is a TV journalist and anchor-turned-creator of BizBOXTV, a Canadian online video production, advertising and social media marketing agency.
via 5 ways to create video ads that translate into cash.
Facebook Video Production: Views Hitting All-Time Highs
Facebook reached a new high last month with almost 558 million video views, according to comScore’s February 2013 US Online Video Rankings.
For the month, Facebook was second with 61.2 million unique video viewers — well behind Google/YouTube’s 150.6 million uniques. Facebook’s 558 million video views was third overall, way behind Google/YouTube’s 11.3 billion and AOL with 570 million video views. Facebook is near the bottom when it comes to engagement, with an average of 19.9 minutes per viewer (MPV) during February. The only Top 10 video site with lower engagement is Amazon at 12.6 MPV.
Facebook video production views wasn’t the only online video record last month. ComScore says Google/YouTube set a new high with more than 2.2 billion video ads delivered in February — almost a quarter of the overall 9.9 billion video ads that were shown during the month.
via Facebook’s 558 Million Video Views In February Is Its All-Time High [comScore].
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- Published in Facebook, Video Production
Time Spent On Facebook Increases 700%
The total time spent on Facebook has increased nearly 700% year over year, according to Nielsen.
Nielsen reported Tuesday that total time spent on the social networking site rose from 1.7 billion minutes in April 2008 to 13.9 billion minutes in April 2009, making it the top social network in terms of the amount of time users spend on the site.
“We have seen some very exciting growth in Facebook during the past year, and a subsequent decline in MySpace,” Jon Gibs, VP of media and agency insights for Nielsen Online, said in a prepared statement. “Twitter has come on the scene in an explosive way, perhaps changing the outlook for the entire space.”
However, he warned that social networking sites can fall out of favor quickly with consumers, regardless of how fast they are growing or how big they are. As proof, Gibs pointed out that Friendster and MySpace were rising stars and appeared to be unbeatable.
“Neither Facebook nor Twitter are immune,” he said. “Consumers have shown that they are willing to pick up their networks and move them to another platform, seemingly at a moment’s notice.”
Nevertheless, April marked the fourth consecutive month that Facebook ranked first for its number of unique visitors and time spent.
MySpace, however, retains the lead in one respect: online video. The site has 120.8 million video streams, and its visitors spent 384 million minutes watching video on the site, according to Nielsen. That’s about 38.8 minutes for each viewer. Facebook visitors spend just 113.5 million minutes viewing video on the site in April, with just 11.2 minutes per viewer. Those figures draw attention to the importance of who visits the sites and what engenders their loyalty, according to Nielsen.
Nielsen found that Facebook seems to hold more appeal to people between the ages of 25 and 34 and 35 to 49, respectively, while MySpace draws users from ages 18 to 24 and 12 to 17.
- Published in Facebook, Social Media Video