I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how to increase our online engagement, especially through social media. I recently did a small ad campaign to promote our fundraising wine event and had considerable success for as small of a budget as I had. The event did sell out, after all (though not by Facebook advertising alone). So when I came across an article on HubSpot Blogs from 7/13/15 titled “How to Create Facebook Video Ads” by Anton Eliasson, I decided to try it right then and there.
Following his advice, I built my video ad using our 2015/16 Season video trailer. It is a tad long at just over 4 minutes, but we had it made especially for the season and I hadn’t used it as much as I would have liked. I thought this was a great way to promote the season and our subscription campaign just before single tickets go on sale.
What I really liked about this video ad setup is that I could really drill down to a specific target audience, one that looked like the people who are already attending our concerts. Here are selections I made to make it really targeted.
- AGE: I chose adults 25+
- EDUCATION: Some College and higher
- INTERESTS: I selected several classical music and related interests, like violin, piano, Beethoven, etc.
- LOCATION: I chose targeting of up to 50 miles around the Chattanooga area
- VIDEO PLACEMENT: Desktop and Mobile Newsfeeds
- BID TYPE: Optimized CPM
- COST: $500
I started the ad on July 15 and had it scheduled to run through August 2 (the day before single tickets went on sale.) But because of an issue with my credit card (my company credit card number was stolen, so while I had to cancel the number and wait for a new card, FB tried to bill me and it wouldn’t go through, thus ending my ad early…), I only spent $421. Regardless of the early end, I saw some great results. I got all of the following data from their easy to read reporting in Ads Manager. Here are the highlights:
- IMPRESSIONS: 96,614 (# of times my ad entered the screen for the first time)
- VIEWS: 35,933; now, this is an inflated number because it counts as a view anytime someone ‘views’ the ad for at least 3 seconds. Since many of us have videos on autoplay, I think several of these were just playing while people were scrolling. But here’s a better breakdown: 1,454 people viewed 25% of the ad, 936 viewed 50% of the ad, 765 viewed 75% of the ad, and 597 people viewed 100% of the ad.
- AVG % OF VIDEO VIEWED: 6.3% (which was approximately 24 seconds)
- REACH: 34,704 (unique viewers)
- FREQUENCY: 2.78 (# of times a unique person was delivered the ad in their newsfeed)
- COST PER VIEW: $.01 with a Relevance Score of 8 (10 is best)
- CPM: $4.36 (cost per thousand impressions)
What I liked most about my results was the engagement. These stats tell me how people engaged with our ad or our FB page due to seeing the ad:
- CLICKS ON AD: 1,549
- CTR: 1.6% (click-thru rate)
- CPC: $.27 (cost per click)
- POST LIKES: 248
- POST SHARES: 55
- WEBSITE CLICKS: 59
- PAGE LIKES: 83 (Another way I look at this number is that I paid approximately $5 each for 83 new fans of our FB page)
The other interesting result I got was even though I selected Desktop and Mobile feeds, 98% of the ads were viewed on a mobile device. I found that number fascinating.
For our first time out on Facebook video advertising, I’m pretty happy with the results. We got people engaging with us, liking us, going to our website, etc. I’ll definitely try it again in the future.
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