Why Facebook for video?

We all know that Facebook is the OG when it comes to social media advertising. Since it was established in 2004, Facebook has been the dominant social media platform worldwide.

But why should you use Facebook video ads? Here’s some stats for you:

• Facebook gets over 8 billion average daily video views
• 500 million people watch Facebook videos every day
• 100 million hours of videos are watched each day on Facebook
• Facebook videos receive 135% higher reach than photos

To sum it up: video is what users what. Facebook’s algorithm is designed to show users video content over anything else. So don’t rely solely on text or static images – let’s give your audience what they want!

Best practices for creative

Ok so you’ve decided to give Facebook video ads a go. But where do you start? Over the years, we’ve developed some pretty good insights and we’re happy to share these with you!

Above all else, you should ensure that your ad works to achieve the overall goals of your business. All imagery, content and messaging should reflect the values of your brand and appeal to your audience.

Here’s some tips for developing the right creative for your Facebook video ad:

What format should I use?

So now that you’re armed with expert tips on creating attention-grabbing videos that your audience can’t scroll past, let’s have a look at some of the Facebook ad formats you can choose from.

From News Feed ads on mobile, ads in the sidebar on desktop, there’s a delivery option suitable for every campaign. The most important thing to select the format that best aligns with your campaign goals.

Facebook Video Ads Formats

In-Stream Video Ads

Increase brand awareness with In-Stream Ads

Facebook’s In-Stream ads let you place a 5-15 second ad at any point within an existing Facebook video. Available on both mobile and desktop, In-Stream ads can be served on third-party sites, allowing for a greater reach than just advertising on Facebook. These ads are best for enticing people that haven’t heard of your brand.

This option increases view times and impressions, as you’re getting in front of users who are already actively engaged with a video. Plus, 70% of these impressions are viewed to completion with the sound on!

In-stream ads are one of the best tools for capturing the attention of Facebook users, however you are interrupting the experience of another video and many users can find this annoying. So it’s important to keep your ad clear and concise.

Targeting Options

For the most part, Facebook video ads have very similar targeting capabilities to other Facebook ads.

However, they do have one unique advantage. Once you’ve run at least one video ad, you have the ability to create an engagement custom audience based on video views.

This means that you can essentially retarget any users who have engaged with your video content in the past. You can even refine this custom audience based on how long users watched your video ads for.

This is especially handy if you’re running an ad campaign with multiple related videos. You can promote the latest videos to users who’ve already watched your previous ones, creating a new customer journey.

Facebook Bidding Options Explained

If you want to beat your competitors, it’s not just a matter of creating a wow-worthy video, attention-grabbing copy, choosing the right format and targeting the right audience. You also need to know how to optimise your ad bidding strategy. If you fail to place the right bids you will either: a) pay too much or b) never have your ads delivered.

When you’re creating a new campaign, you’re competing with hundreds of thousands of advertisers for prime real estate on the News Feed, Messenger and Audience Network. Sometimes Facebook won’t have enough space for every advertiser, so only the highest bidders will get placements.

But remember, the amount you bid is not what you’re actually going to pay. It’s just the maximum you’re willing to pay to win the bid and Facebook will always make you pay only the lowest amount to display your ad.

For example:
If your competition bids $.45 and you bid $.50, you’ll win the bid and will only have to pay $.46 because that’s a cent higher than your competition.

However, Facebook’s optimised CPM bidding works best when your ad set’s audience is over 500k. For smaller audiences, you may want to consider optimising your CPM at the Ad set level instead.

Recommended bidding strategy for videos

Pay per impressions or CMP is the default bidding strategy for videos and is the recommended strategy for driving brand impact.

Using this strategy optimises your ad to reach people who are likely to view your video for at least 15 seconds, or for nearly its total length if the video is shorter than 15 seconds. For each impression, Facebook counts video views separately and excludes any time spent replaying the video.

You can also set a custom bid at the ad set level, in the Budget & Schedule > Bid Amount section.

Optional bidding strategy for videos

Facebook also gives you the option of selecting ThruPlay View to bid on. This method will optimise your ad to reach people who are likely to view your video for a total of 15 seconds or for the entire length if the video is shorter than 15 seconds.

To choose this option:

• Go to Ads Manager and create a video views objective campaign
• At the ad set level, below Budget & Schedule > When You Get Charged, click More Options
• Choose ThruPlay

Setting up for success

Equipped with all this information, you’re now ready to launch your first campaign. So what’s the best process and what should you be on the lookout for? Follow our simple steps below:

How to analyse video performance on Facebook

When you log into Facebook Ads Manager, you’ll be hit with heaps of metrics to look at! Don’t panic. We’re here to break it down for you. Each campaign will display different metrics, depending on whether they’re set up for brand awareness or conversions. The main ones you’re going to want to focus on include the relevance score, engagement and traffic.

Relevance score

Like the name suggests, relevance score gauges how relevant your ad is to the audience you’re serving it to. The higher the relevancy score is, the less cost-per-impressions you’ll be paying.

Generally speaking, you’ll want to see your relevancy score remain high or continue to rise during your campaign. But you may have to continually tweak and retarget your campaigns to maintain a consistent score.

If your relevancy score is less than seven you should make some tweaks either to your ad or your audience parameters to make sure you’re getting the best return on ad spend.

If your relevancy score starts to nosedive, your ad is being seen by the same people over and over again, so they’re no longer reacting to it.

Engagement

If you’re running an awareness campaign, you will want to analyse engagement throughout the length of your video.

You should aim to get people to watch at least half, if not the whole video.

If views decrease from 100% to 25% over the length of the video, this is a good indicator that it has a good hook but gets less interesting towards the end. You can see exactly where viewers drop off and lose interest, so you can look at your video at that point and think about how to improve it.

Traffic

For conversion campaigns, you should look at traffic metrics, checking how many people are clicking to your website from your ad.

If you use a tracking pixel, it’s easy to view these results from Facebook ads because you can see exactly how many people clicked on the ad to your website.

Generally speaking, a campaign with a click-through rate of 0.5%-1% is considered pretty strong. However, by precisely targeting your audience and sending them to a relevant landing page on your website, you should expect to see 1.5-2% click-through rates.

Testing, testing: Facebook video ads in 2025

We don’t want to just tell you how great Facebook video ads are. We’re performing our own experiment, comparing all Facebook video formats against each other, as well as analysing video ad campaigns across a number of social media platforms including YouTube, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, Snapchat, Pinterest, Tik Tok and even Tinder! Watch this space for results.

Check out some of our favourite Facebook video ads!

Need some inspo before embarking on your Facebook video ad campaign? Look no further! We’ve gathered some clever campaigns from some of our favourite brands all over the world.

Did you know, Facebook also posts the top-performing ads of each month in every industry?! You can check them out here.

Chatbooks

Chatbooks, a photo book and printing company, has created a visual masterpiece that’s immediately engaging to users:

The ad draws you in with music, colours, dynamic expressions and a quirky narrative, without trying to overtly sell you a product. The ad helps to build a positive, lasting impression on the audience, generating a wider audience for retargeting down the track.

Merrell

American hiking and outdoor apparel brand Merrell,  reverts customer expectations in their new product launch:

With the caption “Part Sneaker. Part Hiker. Helping you connect to the outside.” and a witty call to action “Go on take a Snike”, the audience is immediately drawn-in and understands the value of product.

RedBull

RedBull took to Facebook to promote the adventure of a lifetime for thirsty explorers:

The campaign challenged students from 60+ countries to travel across Europe to Amsterdam in seven days, using only cans of RedBull as currency. Taking full advantage of Ads Manager’s targeting capabilities, the creative was re-used and repurposed across Facebook, Instagram and Messenger in both organic and sponsored posts. This delivered a seamless cross-platform experience and increased engagement in the campaign.

Missguided

Women’s fashion brand, Missguided takes to Facebook to relaunch their iconic collaboration with Playboy:

The eye-capturing fast-paced cuts and boomerang-style editing immediately appeals to young women, creating interest, desire and an air of exclusivity. With minimal text, prominent branding and a simple caption “The iconic collaboration reloaded. Playboy x Missguided is back, own it now from $20.” viewers are compelled to take action – and they know exactly where to go to buy the featured products.

Get started with Facebook video ads today!

Now that you’ve read our guide and know everything you could possibly need to know about Facebook video ads, it’s time to start working on your next campaign.

Of course, if you’d rather leave it to the pros, we’d be happy to help! From design to execution and analysis, we’ll deliver the right campaign for your audience and continually monitor for higher return on investment.

If you want to find out more about Facebook video ads with Redback, get in touch with us today!