Facebook Video Ads destroy Static Image Ads

11/13/17

It hurts when you realize that the thing you believe is good, is actually not good at all. Like when I play pick-up basketball in my 30’s with a memory of what my body could do in my early 20’s. Sometimes the truth hurts, but it’s what makes us better. ANYWAYS – let’s talk Facebook ads, not jump-shots.

Sorry to break it to you but the image ads you’ve been in love with for the past few months are causing your Facebook ad campaign to underperform. It’s bad and it needs to go. In the recent head-to-head tests we ran at Granular, a 15 second video absolutely destroyed image ads that we tested it against.

What used to be our golden boy of static ads was quickly dethroned by a simple 15 second video ad. Note that the video cost us less than $50 and 15 minutes to produce.

The Results:

The results were, on average, 1083% better CTR (clickthrough rate) at a 79% Lower CPC (cost per click). In caveman terms: More Traffic, Less Money. Good ad. Seriously, over 1000%!

Our headline wasn’t click-bait, the video ads truly destroyed our static image ad performance! Anecdotally,  we’ve heard other advertisers have similar results – albeit not 1000% improvements, but noticeable improvements with video ads over static.

 

The Ads:

Winning Video Ad (clipped slightly to make this gif)

 

Static Image Ad (Previous Champ)

facebook static ad example

 

The Raw Stats:

While we manage over six figures in Facebook ad spend per month, this test didn’t need much spend in order to generate statistically significant results. A cheap and data-driven test is an amazing combo. We ran three separate statistically significant tests with slight variations in audience targets, so we feel pretty confident about all the praise we’re giving video ads here.

facebook video ad performance stats

The News:

We’ve been hearing about video ad performance more and more in the expert Facebook marketing community. It’s all the buzz and for very good reason. Facebook even prefers video content over static because it generates more engagement from users…which equates to more revenue for Facebook, so it makes sense.

Bonus tip: One of the smartest tactics we’ve seen was creating a video file that is basically a static image…it gets better engagement and more exposure on Facebook, overrides the 20% text rule and overall outperforms a static image while still looking like a static image. It’s pretty smart, give it a try.

Final Thoughts and Disclaimer:

We based our test off of our objective, which was to drive users back to our website and contact us. This was not a video-view objective. We didn’t spend $10k on a nice video that we wanted users to watch in entirety. We created a cheap and dirty video for the purpose of driving clicks back to our site, and it worked. So, if we look at view and drop-off rates it’s not amazing. However, the clicks and engagement is what we cared about – and those stats crushed the static image version.

Facebook is a very powerful ad platform that more clients are migrating to each month. We manage six figures in Facebook ad spend each month and see multiples of that return for profit with our clients. It’s not just a social channel for vanity, it’s a revenue driver with incredibly advanced targeting options. Feel free to contact us with any questions.

Jordon Meyer - Granular Founder headshot

Jordon Meyer

Jordon Meyer is the Founder and CEO of Granular. With over 19 years of hands-on paid search marketing experience, he's one of the most experienced PPC experts in the Midwest and one of the few digital ad agency CEOs who actually knows the work he sells. His experience comes from both agency and client-side work, ranging from small digital agencies in Milwaukee to running the day-to-day in-house PPC on the internal marketing team at Best Buy in Minneapolis. He started Granular out of the continued demand for his expertise and the overall need for a laser-focused PPC agency that focuses on measurable results.