Facebook tests charging brands for video ads
Facebook will be testing a new measurement tool for marketers who buy Facebook video ads. It is introducing cost-per-view bidding (CPV) that will allow the platform to charge brands for video ads, after they have been played on users’ News Feeds for 10 seconds.
The buying option test which will soon be available in Facebook’s ad buying tools is a result of the increasing popularity of videos on the platform. In figures released by the social networking site in January 2015, it shows that in just one year, the number of video posts per person has increased 75 per cent globally and 94 per cent in the US. Globally, the amount of video from people and brands in News Feed has increased 3.6 times year-over-year.
Facebook says in a media statement, “We recognize that advertisers value different performance metrics and methods of buying: CPV buying is for advertisers who value video views as the best proxy for a business objective, and while we don’t believe this bidding option to be an optimal brand bidding strategy, we firmly believe in giving advertisers control over how they buy.”
Facebook’s current brand bidding options include Reach & Frequency and Auction Optimised for Video Views, which the firm says are the recommended methods of driving reach and brand impact.
A Nielsen report on Facebook video ads shows that from the moment a video ad was viewed on a News Feed (even before one second), lift happened across ad recall, brand awareness, and purchase consideration. This means even people who never watched the video, but did see the impression, were still impacted by the ad.
That data also shows that people who watched under three seconds of the video ad created up to 47 per cent of the total campaign value, and people who watched for fewer than 10 seconds created up to 74 per cent, depending on the metric. That means that while lift continued to increase the longer people watched, people didn’t have to watch a whole video to be affected by the ad. Even video views under 10 seconds effectively build awareness and drive purchase intent.
