ShareOur client had a number of good quality video content they wanted to test on Facebook and Instagram. We staggered the launch of these and began with three video variants per audience, and then added in newer variants over time.
However, because there is a relatively high number of assets and no way to cap delivery at ad level, we found some videos were not getting as much delivery as others despite metrics looking promising that the variant could be a good performer.
We opted to test some dynamic video ads to see the impact this would have on click-through rates (CTRs) and cost per click (CPC).
Use dynamic formats and ad creative to show people different formats, creative and destinations based on what they’re most likely to respond to. When you use dynamic formats and creative, you can create more relevant ads at scale and deliver a personalised version of your ad to everyone who sees it. There are a number of reasons to use dynamic ads:
- Relevancy and personalisation
- Keep ads fresh
- Discover best performers
When creating a dynamic ad, you can optimise the creative based on the person’s likelihood to respond. As an example, a holiday company that is promoting summer vacancies may use three images within their dynamic ad: one depicting a family at the resort, another of a young couple, and the third, an older couple. Based on the information Facebook knows about its user, it will auto-serve the best suited ad for the user. So, an older, retired person may see the older couple as this will be more relevant to them.
You can also use dynamic ads to just keep ads fresh, that way when saturating an audience, they still see a variety of ads as the asset/text combination can vary and you can upload up to 10 images/videos, and 5 body copies, 5 calls to action and 5 headlines. As a result, a single ad could spawn up to 6,250 unique combinations of title, image/video, text, description and call to action. However, Facebook will only serve a fraction of those combinations because its system is designed to pick which combinations are likely to have the most success.
Our client used dynamic ads to test the format as a strategy, but also as a way to see which video performed best, as they were all similar with slight variation.
The 3 video variants drove results as follows:
Video 1 – 0.59% link CTR
Video 2 – 0.87% link CTR
Video 3 – 2.71% link CTR
We saw a 359% increase from the lowest performer compared to the top performer, and Facebook then delivered the third video most frequently based on this performance.
When comparing the dynamic video results overall to using standard video, we saw a 94% increase in CTR.
Traditional video link – CTR 1.04%
Dynamic ads video link – CTR 2.02%
However, we did see an increase in CPC when using dynamic at 52 pence compared to 37 pence for traditional video format.
In terms of actual video engagement, the results are below:
| % of users who watched 25% | % of users who watched 50% | % of users who watched 75% | % of users who watched 100% | |
| Dynamic | 44.5% | 30.2% | 24.8% | 22.4% |
| Traditional | 10.5% | 4.5% | 2.4% | 1.7% |
Not only was the link CTR improved by using dynamic ads, the actual percentage of users who stayed to watch the whole video was 1,248% higher than that of the traditional video element, and the percentage of drop-off was considerably less as Facebook was able to target users who are more likely to engage with the video.
Based on the numbers reported, we have implemented the dynamic ad format as an Always On strategy for our client.
If you would like help with social advertising, feel free to get in contact with our team on 0845 450 2086 and we can help you get started.
