Best Practices for Creating Auto-Play Video Ads on Facebook

Over the past few months, Facebook has gradually introduced members and businesses to its new auto-play video ad unit. Officially announced in March, these premium video ads are designed to play automatically as members scroll through News Feed for 15 seconds without sound.

That same month, more advertisers were given access to the ad unit. As the social network inches closer to a wider rollout, advertisers are understandably eager to take advantage. Although premium video ads are still limited, now is the perfect time to begin brainstorming and prepping for Facebook’s review process.

Here are some best practices to consider when crafting your auto-play video ad campaigns. And don’t forget to take a look at the past year’s top-performing branded videos and samples of non-invasive video ads before you start filming.

Don’t Recycle Content

While there’s definitely a time and place for cross-posting your content, we don’t recommend repurposing videos that people have already seen elsewhere. Keep in mind that anyone who doesn’t want to see your ad can just scroll past it in News Feed. Because of that, you’ll want to ensure that the video you paid to promote is something that people can’t find anywhere else — at least initially.

By this, we mean Facebook auto-play video ads should be reserved for sharing exclusive content. Once the ad has run its course, you can feel free to republish it on other platforms. But as long as it’s running on Facebook, make sure that that’s the only place people can find something like it. For example, if you’re promoting a trailer for a movie like Lionsgate did for “Divergent,” then it should either be the first trailer or one with exclusive scenes from the movie that can’t be found in other existing trailers …read more

Source: Sprout Social