Facebook’s Video Ads – What You Need to Know

1-300x168It’s happening. Facebook is launching video ads. No, the new ad platform isn’t a large scale, autoplay video ad strategy originally discussed, but Facebook is aggressively marketing their new in-post, user-initiated video ad products.

Facebook is asking its marketing developer partners (called PMDs) to pitch their clients Facebook ads. They’ve distributed a slide deck for pitching these ads. The presentation tries very hard to convince advertisers that Facebook isn’t just an alternative to TV advertising, but that it actually reaches more people than TV ads can.

You can view the full slide deck here, but here are some of the highlights:

1. Be Where People Are
Facebook’s first and most compelling argument is that advertisers need to be where people are. TV, they insinuate, is a medium of the past. People are getting their entertainment on their smartphones, tablets, and laptops. They’re constantly on Facebook. And, as the graphics in the presentation suggest, there is precedence for this change in channel popularity.

Radio was king-that is until the mid-1950s, when TV began to surpass radio in popularity. Then, in the late 90s, digital exploded onto the market and has grown incredibly quickly, finally surpassing TV around 2010. Facebook forecasts that mobile and digital will continue to grow quickly while radio and television flat line and eventually decrease.

And Facebook has the data to back it up. The average Facebook user checks Facebook 10-15 times per day and checks their smartphone 100x per day. Also, as their striking circle graphic outlines, mobile users use Facebook more than they use Google, Pinterest, ESPON, Twitter, AOL, MLB baseball, YouTube, Yahoo, or Windows products…combined.

2. Reach All of The People Who Matter to You
The second main point Facebook makes is that not only do more people use Facebook than watch TV, but that the right people use Facebook. Facebook’s population reach for consumers ages 18-24 is about 75%. The major prime time networks all hover around 55%-65%.

Plus, Facebook says that they’re able to reach real consumers efficiently. They show an infographic that outlines the staggering difference between other online campaigns and Facebook campaigns. They quote a Nielsen report that says the average online reach for narrowly targeted campaigns is 38% accurate. The average Facebook reach for narrowly targeted campaigns is 89% accurate.

3. Your Brand in The Most Engaging Digital Real Estate
Facebook touts their user experience design as a reason to purchase ad space. Their video ads, they claim, are “delivered in a linear way, integrated into the experience.” People can choose to view the ads and are not forced to view them. The ads are native, and can be edited to optimize for video views or for link clicks. The new video format, optimized or views, are 11X larger than offsite video is.

And, as is Facebook’s M.O., the ads can be targeted to achieve maximum exposure across both desktop and mobile. And, their two different “blocks” make targeting even easier. Reach Block allows advertisers to guarantee reach and Target Block enables more “granulated” targeting.

4. Drive Business Results
Of course, the goal of the advertisers and of Facebook is to drive business results. In their pilot program, Facebook saw 2x increase in game trailer views, 128% lift driving branded search term usage, and a 71% lift driving visits to retailer title pages.

You can see the mini case studies on the full slide deck, here: http://digiday.com/platforms/heres-how-facebook-is-pitching-video-to-brands/

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