Smartly.io: Nail Down the Creative Mix in Your Campaigns - Why Video Performance Matters
Creative is one of the most critical components in driving ROI for your Facebook campaigns. The most successful advertisers create a significantly higher volume of creatives compared to their industry peers and mix their creative content for a positive impact on performance. In a recent study by Facebook, brands who used both static and video assets had, on average, a 17% higher rate of conversions compared to brands using static only.
Although video assets are notorious for their high production costs, creative automation tools such as Smartly.io's Video Templates empower advertisers to create video content with limited resources. The key to successful digital advertising, however, is to test the performance impact of your video assets in your creative mix. Here are a few things you should first consider before running your tests:
How Should You Test for the Optimal Creative Mix?
If you plan to add video in your creative mix, we recommend you to test static versus static and video.
A common mistake is to test static and video assets against one another, disregarding that the optimal creative mix is more relevant: static and video complement each other as some users respond better to static, while others prefer video. Mixing creative assets can also reduce ad fatigue as users don’t get bored with repetitive creatives.
Remember to test the budget split between static and video as well – we recommend that at least 20% of the overall budget is spent on video.
What If Performance Varies by Attribution Model?
We have consistently seen a pattern with Static and Video assets’ performance varying by attribution model:
* Static tends to perform best with click-through only models
* Video performs better with view-through attribution
As a best practice, we recommend analyzing the performance of the creative mix using different attribution models and compare the creative mixes (static vs. static + video). We should test cells against each other within different attribution models. How those compare against each other depends on if we have view-through included in our attribution model or not.
The conflict in results based on different attribution models makes assessing results challenging. Incrementality is ultimately what matters most, which is why we recommend a Multi-Cell Lift Test.
Fueling Incremental Conversions with Video for Feed-Based Advertising
Feed-based advertising is optimal for adding video into your creative mix. Dynamic Ads are traditionally the best performing campaign type when advertising products in your catalog. Since Dynamic Ads are only available in a static image format, it is beneficial to add video in the creative mix.
With Smartly.io’s Video Templates, you can achieve a creative mix by adding video ads created automatically from the products in your catalog. Through systematic testing, we have proven that video can boost the incremental performance of your campaigns considerably.
In a test that we conducted with a global app advertiser, we achieved a 50% lower incremental Cost Per Purchase by building video ads on Smartly.io's Video Templates and adding them on top of Dynamic Ads.
How Should You Iterate Your Video Content?
Video creation is an iterative process – if the first video variation does not perform, continue to play with different formats until you find the winning formula. Here are some elements you can test and iterate:
Overall video length
Fast vs. slow pace editing
Call-To-Action
Brand logo and offer - speed of reveal and placement (beginning or end)
Content localization
Adding seasonal elements
People vs. landscape
TV commercials cut to shorter formats
User generated content
Animation or film
Color schemes
Video format: Stories vs. In-feed videos, Collection and Canvas
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