It takes a significant investment of time and capital to plan, produce, and distribute TV commercials. On Facebook, the only real barrier to entry is testing video ads and acting on the lessons learned.
Additionally, the feedback loop and audience insights available on Facebook provide considerably more advantages over TV—marketers can take an agile approach to test and learn before scaling up.
There are a few other areas where Facebook excels over TV that marketers can benefit from: targeting, interactivity, and measurement. Because of Facebook’s social, mobile, digital framework—and massive reach of 2.1 billion people—these benefits just aren’t possible with media buys on TV. Let’s take a closer look at each one.
1. Targeting
Facebook’s wealth of psychographic, demographic, and first-party data matching options allow you to reach very precise audiences with your video content. With TV, media buyers are more limited to reaching people based on the types of shows they’re watching and time of day. Facebook Custom Audiences, in conjunction with your Video Ads, allow you to reach people who’ve interacted with your brand, online or offline, with personalized content.
2. Interactivity
To keep the conversation going with people who engaged with your video content, you can create audiences. Not so on TV. Although you can continue to buy commercials for specific channels to reach people based on the type of entertainment and channels they prefer, you can’t be 100% confident you’re reaching that exact person.
What this means—marketers on Facebook can take an interactive approach to the media planning and buying process by aligning video formats with a compelling narrative to drive conversion.
For example, using Facebook Video Ads, The Economist increased newspaper subscriptions across 24 countries, including the US and in the UK, by 66%. A key driver of success was Marin’s multi-objective media plans, allowing The Economist to implement a full-funnel strategy by re-engaging people who had interacted with their web properties, and video ads with bottom-of-funnel messaging to subscribe.
3. Measurement and Optimization
Video ads on Facebook provide marketers with instant insights, such as how long people watched your video, demographic insights of who interacted with your video, and ultimately whether or not your video impacted a conversion online or off.
In broadcast TV, Nielsen's ratings are the de facto performance measurement, capable of providing statistical conversion lift insights. However, the data insights available on Facebook are instantaneous, allowing marketers to take an agile test-and-learn approach to determine which videos are performing the best and then scale budget upwards. Gaining similar insights with TV would mean more time and higher costs.
Using video ads on Instagram, online casino LeoVegas saw a 44% decrease in cost per first time depositing player. Their key to success was implementing the carousel format with video ads to optimize to the game creative, with the highest level of engagement ultimately lowering overall costs.
Carousel ads automatically determine the most engaging video creative and then shift budget accordingly. For LeoVegas, this wouldn’t have been possible with a TV commercial. TV also couldn’t have measured how much revenue LeoVegas generated from people subscribing online.
Facebook Video: An Easy Win
With social video advertising on the rise and more people actually watching videos before making a purchase, the mandate’s clear—advertisers should incorporate video into their Facebook advertising. If you’d like to learn how Marin can help, contact us today.
