In response to the budding love affair with video content on social media, Facebook has made it easier for advertisers to grow their brand presence with mobile video ads. The move coincides with the increase in mobile use, rivaling television and desktop viewership, along with a need to satisfy the short attention spans of social media users.

What’s New?

Following tests conducted by Facebook earlier in the year, the social media giant has tweaked their mobile advertising platform to help brands reach more people on mobile. The new features allow ad creators to create more concise, short-form videos, either from scratch or scaling down longer television ads. Additionally, advertisers can use the new features to optimize the aspect ratio of their videos to better suit mobile feeds, as well as edit videos to ensure brand mentions appear earlier.

In addition to these mobile video ad optimization features, Facebook also announced updates to its target rating point (TRP) ad buying feature that was launched in September 2015. TRPs help advertisers merge their television ad campaigns with Facebook’s large social market while targeting specific target audiences. The new updates allow marketers to use US Nielsen designated market areas (DMAs) to compare their Facebook/Instagram targeted advertising numbers to television ads. Furthermore, advertisers can purchase day-part ads, which are ads that are shown at a specified time of the day. Day-part mobile video ads are available in 4-hour blocks or more and help marketers design their video advertising strategy around optimal times of the day when their ads are more likely to be viewed.

What Difference Does this Make?

If initial tests are anything to go by, the new mobile ad optimization features could help you significantly increase your audience reach on Facebook and potentially increase revenues. Facebook ran mobile ad campaigns with several recognized brands and reported significant jumps in all the important metrics. In one case, Facebook’s optimized mobile ads were able to increase 10-second views of a video for popular dishwashing products brand, Finish, by 136% over the original television ad.

In another case, Facebook worked with Wells Fargo and their ad company, BBDO San Francisco, to optimize an existing television ad. The ad, which showcases how easy it is to replace a debit card with the company, had a 3-point increase in ad recall and twice the amount of impressions in the mobile news feed, after being optimized using the new features.

Finally, Facebook used its new mobile video ad features to optimize Wrigley’s “Life Happens in 5” television ad. The end result was a sevenfold increase in viewer impressions and an eight point increase in ad recall.

Why these Updates Make Sense

Here are some facts that highlight the potential impact of the new mobile video ad features by Facebook:

• On average, 100 million hours of video content is viewed via Facebook every day.
• Estimates indicate that mobile video viewership will increase to 75% of total mobile data traffic by the year 2020.
• Short-form television ads, averaging 15 seconds, increased by 3.4% between 2010 and 2015, compared to a decline in 60 – 120-second ads.
• Nielsen market research statistics indicate that advertisers experienced a 19% increase in targeted reach when TV and Facebook advertising were combined.
• A Nielsen study of 7 campaigns in 2015 indicated that Facebook impressions were twice as likely to reach target audiences compared to TV impressions.

Advertising on Facebook has never been easier using mobile video. The new features have been rolled out to advertisers around the world, so you can try them out as soon as possible.