You’ve probably heard this a million times: Video ads outperform any other type of ad on Facebook. Since a bunch of marketing “influencers” keep saying it, it must be true, right? We’re supposed to blindly follow influencers, right?!
We don’t roll that way. In our tests, video ads do perform really well, but it was hard to prove that they perform better than image ads.
How do you really prove that video ads are more effective? It’s pretty dang hard to A/B test video vs. image ads.
Luckily, the crew over at Agorapulse took the time to figure it out, and they’ve got the results in today’s Listen.
Here are their insights, timestamped for your reading pleasure:
- (1:10) Agorapulse didn’t really buy into video advertising at first. They only used 5% of their ad-budget on it.
- (1:30) They decided to test video ads to see what would happen. Their hypothesis was that video ads would not outperform image ads in a meaningful way. The conversions they want from FB ads are things like leads, free trials, subscriptions, etc.
- (2:07) To test this, they created two nearly identical campaigns – one was a 1-minute video and the other was a still image that mirrored the video. They targeted people who had previously visited their website.
- (5:00) Based on their 28-day conversion window, they picked up 31 new leads and 40 free trials—for both ads combined.
- (5:55) The video ad actually brought in 12 more free trials than the image ad. It was also the ad that led to a paid subscription. So their hypothesis was wrong.
- (7:40) Their sample size was large enough that they can say with 98% certainty that video ads outperform image ads.
- (9:35) They think they could still improve their ads by split-testing the split tests.
- (12:10) They’re still not sure if this campaign provided ROI because their sales cycle is sometimes as long as 90-days. That’s important to keep in mind for your company.
