As a leading digital agency offering professional social media management and web development Surrey, the team here at Thunderbolt Digital always makes sure to keep up to date with the latest developments in web design, social media, and online marketing, which allows us to aid our clients to the fullest extent possible. We believe that organic reach is vital to any local business, but recognise that advertising space is something that cannot be ignored and so aim to uncover which methods of paid advertisement best fits our clients, including video advertising.
Popular social media site Facebook has been dropping banner ads for a while now, labelling them as something that lacks value and quality and instead pressing for the increased adoption of native and video ads, which are more likely to bring in high-quality clicks. Even though video advertisements are generally thought to be far more successful, the initial problem still remains of how to capture and keep audience attention.
Users of social media are consuming content faster than ever before, meaning that most viewers watch videos for a paltry average of just 1.7 seconds on mobile, which is even less than the already short time of 2.4 seconds on desktop. There isn’t a lot of chance here to get your message across, meaning that video ads need to be shorter and punchier – more impact is needed right off the bat and a hook is required to keep the audience watching. In fact, 43% of people who watch the first 3 seconds of a video will stick around for 10 seconds, and most of the people who watch these 10 seconds end up staying for the full video, meaning some users will watch the equivalent of a television advert slot, as long as they find the video advertisement engaging enough.
Doing your best to cater to your audience is always a wise decision, especially in advertising – you want your audience to actually listen to the message you’re trying to send them, after all! With this in mind, it’s been advised to consider mobile audience first and foremost when developing video advertisements; in the same vein as mobile responsiveness, it’s not just your site that needs to cater to users but your ads, too, especially ones that are present on social media.
On top of this, it’s important to remember that videos on Facebook are set to autoplay without sound by default, which many users don’t bother to change. This means that Facebook users could be viewing those precious first moments of your video, but the lack of sound could be letting you down (as most video ads are boring or nonsensical without sound)! To help you combat this, Facebook has released a tool that allows you to caption your ads, and have also supplied some tips on how to create engaging silent videos for your campaigns.