Facebook Video Ads – Genius or Nuisance?

As I viewed my inbox for this first time this morning, I came across a very interesting e-mail from my most favorite advertising platform around, Facebook! /sarcasm/  While neglecting more Power Editor performance bugs, Facebook has decided to introduce its newest guinea pig of ad testing: video ads! As stated by Facebook, these new short video ads (looking much like its normal Newsfeed ads but with, you guessed it, a playable video instead of a stationary image) are a great way to “show your video to people who matter to you,” “reach people across devices,” and can “drive [brand] awareness and sales.”

With over 50% growth in video viewing on Facebook and people returning to their Newsfeed 14 times a day on average, perhaps these video ads just might work … or they will become a big, annoying disaster. Time will tell.

Lucky for us, Facebook is making it easy as 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10!  Actually, it is more like creating a boosted post than a full blown campaign but with some extra steps and details along the way. You can pretty easily create a video ad by simply going in through the Ads Manager (bypassing Power Editor completely :D) and using the “Create Ad” button and selecting “Video Views.” From there, it is just a matter of carefully going through the motions of targeting, budget, uploading a video and creating copy.

Facebook has even included performance metrics for videos (found in Ads Reporting under the Customize Columns tab), including such data as video views, average percentage of video viewed, average duration of video viewed, etc.

So, now some questions remain:  Will companies actually start to utilize this new type of ad format? (Or will it be ignored kind of like the multiple scrolling ad format?)

Will these video ads actually increase brand awareness and sales? (Or just annoy Facebook users like the auto-play videos?)

Will these video ads be treated as internet commercials? (You can never escape us advertisers…muahahahaha!)

Will they actually work as advertised? (Or will they further hinder Facebook’s overall user experience?)

Like the enigmatic existence of Bigfoot – nobody knows. The truth … may or may not be revealed sometime in the future.

So try it out for your company or brand. Perhaps it may be a happy surprise.