Guest Post by April Donovan. April is a Creative Director & Partner at Blue Collar Agency. You can connect with April on LinkedIn or Twitter.
The plot thickens in the sometimes-hard-to-understand, drawn out saga of social media marketing: Pinterest debuted promoted videos last week. This isn’t a huge shocker—advertisers using Facebook and Instagram for their digital marketing endeavors simply win bigger with video. Pinterest is just trying to keep up.
Why You Should Care
By 2020, advertising spend will nearly double. Those without a solid digital video advertising strategy will be left far, far behind. Even those with a proper mobile video strategy won’t be able to keep up—research shows that most campaigns already are, and will continue to be served across multiple devices. PC, mobile, and TV all want to contend—so be sure to spread an equal share on all devices.
That’s not to say what works now won’t continue to perform—video ad spending on Facebook is rising fast. Anyone who’s run even a modest video ad on Facebook isn’t surprised that it continues to gobble up a bigger share of total video ad spend. Facebook is beginning to stand up, even, with YouTube/Google Video.
Blue Collar Case Study #1
EACH “LIKE” COST .15% OF TOTAL BUDGET.
EACH “LIKE” COST 1.3% OF TOTAL BUDGET.
As with any ad set, testing is key. We ran two ads, both enticing people to “like” the page for more information about visiting the area.
The cost-per-like in this particular case was almost eight times greater for the simple image than it was for the video. Though this is the most extreme case we could dig up out of our archives, it still speaks volumes about the power of video and has greatly impacted our social media advertising strategy going forward.
Blue Collar Case Study #2
This summer, we’ve been managing a quarter-long giveaway for our client, Full Sail Brewing Co. Packed full of summer-centric imagery and video targeting the young craft beer drinker, we mainly used social media to get the word out about the Session Summer Sweepstakes. We used control copy on both a still image and a video for a simple “Likes” Ad on Facebook. Both were generally of the same theme, served up to the same audience, and had identical budgets. The result? Almost twice the interaction on the video.
Cooler Ad for Full Sail Brewing Co. from Blue Collar Agency on Vimeo.
EACH “LIKE” COST .23% OF TOTAL BUDGET.
EACH “LIKE” COST .41% OF TOTAL BUDGET.
Set it in Motion
Simply, people love video. That means that digital platforms are increasingly favoring video over still. Trends predict it and the research backs it up. The formula is simple: make more video, get more interest.