Chapter 5: Making Good Ads
The booming success of TikTok and IG Reels has reinforced the human element of social media when it comes to videos. Social media was always intended for engagement between people, but new viral access via short, trendy videos has brought more faces to your feed than ever. For this reason, it’s important to think about ways to include actual people in your ads. For example, instead of a cinematic montage showing off your product, try a video with a person using your product or explaining it to the audience. Viral TikTok trends of product reviews have driven millions in sales for gimmicky products simply because they had a cool feature and had people willing to hop on trends. If you can secure a consistent brand representative to star in your ads/videos, whether an influencer or an employee of the company, you’ll give yourself the best chance of connecting with your audience.
When it comes to editing, keeping things fast paced is an absolute must. We already mentioned how important your hook is, but the next key metric is retention. Mr. Beast is the best modern example of how to maximize viewer retention in videos, and it’s centered around storytelling. Obviously the story in your 60sec ad is going to be brief, but even illustrating a problem and how your product solves that problem can be told as a story. Think about how you can lead your audience to the natural conclusion that your product is necessary, and make sure to keep things fast paced enough that your viewers don’t get bored. Ads with higher viewer retention will rank higher with the Meta algorithm, and will help you when creating LLA’s based on video viewer retention.
When creating videos specifically for the Meta Ads platform, it’s a good idea to think about a consistency schedule. Testing new creatives into your ad sets should be a constant process. We typically recommend testing around 5 new ad creatives per week. This production load can get heavy if you don’t have a dedicated ad team, so don’t be afraid to outsource some of the work. There are loads of talented editors on applications like Fiverr or on Discord who specialize in creating ads for digital advertising. The Facebook Ads game has been around for a while, so take advantage of resources in the market.