This new Facebook Ads trend is crazy...

0:00Facebook ad and creative has been moving in one direction for nearly a decade until now and I never would have expected this new trend. Let me show you what I'm talking about. So in this video I'm going to talk about Facebook ad formats and specifically which format is now performing better than other formats which completely goes against the trend that we've been seeing for many many years. Basically, since video ads became an option on the platform, and yes, I have been advertising on the platform long enough to remember a time before video ads were a thing. I know to the vast majority of Facebook and advertisers that would seem insane, but

0:34that was the case. I've been advertising platform since 2013. Spent more than $300 million in that time period. Anyway, since video ads were introduced, we've seen that be the trend. more and more video towards video, more advertisers incorporating video, getting their best results from video. And we're working with hundreds of clients at any one time. So, I've got a really good data set within the agency to be able to to see this. It's not just anecdotally in one ad account. Like this is very much across the board, lots of different business types. In the beginning, it was like you can only use video ads for this

1:03type of business and it slowly slowly was spread out across all different business types and and that was very much the trend. And I consistently did polls of my audience as well. In a fortunate position to be able to do that. If we look at the data, right, we can see the shift. So this is a poll I

1:17did 4 years ago on my YouTube channel. Which Facebook ad format works best for you? 38% single image, 44% video, some carousel, some other ran the same poll a year later. Which Facebook Instagram ad format works best for you? Video is increased to 53% image has gone down a little bit in some of the others. So we can see that trend moving. And this is fairly recently, right? 3 years ago. And then two years ago, same thing. Which

1:40Facebook ad format form is best for you? Video is now up to 60% image 27. So you can see it's really taking images share carousel other. But then here's the really interesting thing that I've seen recently and I first noticed this in our own data. Like I said, hundreds of clients. We spend almost hundred million dollars last year. Like we have fantastic internal data. And for those who know my the campaign structure I like to operate with, I like to put multiple ad formats in one adset. So we have a mixture of statics and videos and other and the meta can choose which ads to put in front of which people, where

2:11to allocate spend and things along those lines. Different people respond to to different formats. I still recommend that by the way. I'll get more into that in a minute. But we started noticing a trend recently where Meta was allocating more and more budget to statics to images. I was like that's very interesting. I wonder why why that's happening. I wonder if this is being seen more broadly. So 3 days ago as of the recording of this video I asked this which better ad format is producing the best results for you right now. And look

2:38at this static 54% video 38% 8% other. So we've had this massive trend where it's all moving towards video like I said since it became a thing decade or so. And now all of a sudden go back the other way we're seeing much more budget being allocated to statics. And I think this is really interesting and it has a load of ramifications for Facebook and Instagram advertisers. And that's what I wanted to to quickly discuss in this video. And before I get to that, I want to very quickly let you know about my new school community called the Ben Heath Meta Ads Academy. Over 110 plus

3:09exclusive videos content in there showing you how to get the best possible meta results you won't find anywhere else on YouTube or anywhere. Weekly live Q&A calls with me. I answer every single question in the community. Got questions for me? You can get them answered guaranteed in there. Right now, we have a special discounted price which will not last forever. If you're interested, there's a link in the description. So, let's start by talking about why this is happening. This move towards statics and image ads producing better results for most advertisers posted video and then we'll get into what this means for you as an advertiser and what you should do

3:39about it. I think this is quite simple. I think it's that attention spans are shrinking. People want more information faster. They are used to consuming information really quickly and that means they're just not willing to sit through video ads in many cases. And if you think about in a video ad, yes, you can do more convincing, you can do more explaining, you can show more things that might help convince people to take the action you want to take, buy, become a lead, whatever it is, but how many people even make it to the end where

4:10you've actually got your call to action? Like is your drop off rate 90%. That wouldn't be unusual. So, you're actually only telling 10% of people about your offer in comparison to an image ad where if it's done well, people can see it, understand it instantly, and be like, "Yeah, gotcha, understood. Am I interested? Am I not? Do I want to click through?" I think that for a long time, the added advantage of being able to explain and demonstrate made up for the drop off rate. Now, it isn't because I think we're seeing higher drop off rates. In fact, we are seeing that. We can see that in the numbers. less people

4:42are willing to sit through as much content. They're used to watching very short video clips that really compress down the entertainment or the information into just a few seconds. They get it across really well and and they're just not willing to to sit through the videos. And actually, it makes sense. You think like when I first started advertising, the only form of video that people were regularly consuming on social media was long form YouTube videos. Short form wasn't even a thing. And like since then, everything is just, you know, chunk chunk chunk chunk down, more condensed, trying to deliver more value and be quicker with it. an image is the fastest and quickest

5:13way to get a lot of information um across, right? I also think we're now at a point where images might actually stand out because the majority of the content you're going to see say on your Instagram feed is going to be video. So the static is not the norm and therefore it's going to stand out. Obviously for many many years it was the opposite, right? Instagram was mostly images. I mean this is quite a while ago now but mostly images and other types of post and like the video ad stood out or now the vast majority of content on there is video and so it goes the other way

5:43around which I think is is really interesting. Okay so I think that's why it's happening either way no matter what the reason it is happening I can see that my own data audiences back that up. What does this mean? First thing don't just make statics. So I talked about before I like to have multiple ad formats in an ad set for an offer at any one time. Few reasons for that. Firstly, different people respond to different ad formats. Some people are only ever going to respond to video. Some people are

6:08only ever going to respond to statics. That has been the case even when video was king. So, you still want to be making both cuz that's really beneficial. Also, meta is going to sequence ads. So, they might use a video initially to help raise the awareness and and help understand what the offer is and then they might retarget with more statics. Okay. So, we want to give Meta the flexibility and the options to be able to do that. Having multiple ad formats, Matt is getting smart enough to know when someone is likely to have a higher session time or a lower session time. So there's some really interesting

6:36data about users. Certain times of the day, people will spend more time. They'll take longer sessions. So they might be more susceptible to consuming a video ad in the times where they have longer session time. Let's say the average person spends some time on Instagram in their lunch break at work, right? That might be really good time for a video ad. Whereas perhaps they check their phone just before they go to bed. image ad might be better then because they're not going to spend as

6:58long they'll get sucked into something. So Meta is getting smart enough to work those sorts of things out. So we want to give Meta the flexibility. So don't just make statics, also make video. But statics are much quicker, easier and cheaper to produce in video. Always have been, always will be, right? Especially with a lot of AI tools enabling a lot of this image generation. Now you want to be careful making tons of statics and image ads that look like they're AI generated. We find them not perform well at all. But if you've got images of products, you can use AI to put them in nice backgrounds, to put them on a

7:30model, maybe that looks just as it would if you got a photo shoot done. No one can tell. Brilliant. Go ahead and and use those. So, we know that post Andromeda meta wants creative diversification, lots of different ads. Well, if a larger proportion of our ad mix is statics, that's a lot easier to do. So, we can create static ads, particularly if we incorporate AI, that

7:49look very different from one another. Brilliant. That's what Meta wants. We also know that metal wants a lot of volume when it comes to ad creative. Well, if you're trying to hit 20 ads, if you're doing that with say 16 statics and four videos, a lot easier than 10 and 10. And if we're seeing the statics are outperforming, then it makes doing that strategically potentially the right decision. Now, one of the things I would recommend for statics versus videos is that you need to be more specific and clear in your messaging because you don't have the time and space to explain. In a video you can have

8:21narration, you can have someone direct a camera like they could be telling about this and the use cases and all that sort of stuff. You don't have to be as ber persona specific as I would recommend you would be with statics. The advantage is the readily available information that people can almost immediately consume and decide whether or not they're interested. So in that environment, you want to be very clear of like this product or service is for this person specifically because if that type of person sees it, they are far

8:49more likely to pay attention. Oh, okay. That's interesting. These aren't just running shorts. These are running shorts for sub-zero temperatures, long distance, don't chafe, have a special pocket. Oh, that's my scenario. Exactly. I, you know, I'm a marathon runner. I live in Canada and I run in the winters. Whatever. I don't know. Just an example. That sort of thing. you want to be more specific with your messaging because that's really going to uh to help it stand out. That's a shift that we've been seeing anyway because Andromeda allows for personalized ad delivery. I think this is part of that trend and

9:18that's how you can take advantage of it. And if that means by the way that you have lots more ads that each like tackle a very specific slice of your market, absolutely fine to do that as opposed to trying to capture broader market with each individual ad. be like, "No, no, instead of having one ad trying to talk to this group of people, let's cut them up into 10 different slices and let's have ads that speak to each one of those 10 slices more specifically." And the fact that it's easy to make statics makes that easy, too. It is also still important to factor in what you're

9:46selling. So, the dynamic is true that video allows you more time, space to explain and demonstrate. If that's really important for what you're selling, you may well still see that video performs better. If we go back to this poll that I did a few days ago, you know, 54% statics is very interesting, but we're still looking at 38% video being the best performing ad format. So, clearly there's going to be differences between businesses. Let's say, for example, you've invented something new or you've come up with a brand new concept. Video is likely to perform better for you because you need the time and space to explain it. Whereas, if

10:17it's something that people already know about, well, people are just deciding between your option and other options. Maybe there's a small tweak to what they're expecting that's really beneficial that you can convey instantly within a static format with some text overlay, then great. But yeah, if it's something new they need to understand, videos actually perform better. If you are selling something that's expertise-based that really requires the person to believe in your expertise and your knowledge and connect with you before they're willing to buy from you, then

10:46potentially video is the way to go. Interestingly, that can become less necessary if you're advertising to warm audience. So, I've talked about this dynamic before where let's say you're trying to sell meta ad services. Video is almost certainly the way to go cuz you need to demonstrate expertise, but I don't need to do that because all my ads are going to warm audience. Basically, I have millions of people in my warm audience, which is plenty for what we'd need from an agency standpoint. So actually we're seeing better results on my own stuff from statics because basically we just need to describe the offer, make sure my face is on it so

11:17there's recognition and then very quickly explain what they need to do and that's it. And if we have a video we get the drop off so it's not worth it. Whereas we can do all that in a static and those people are warm. They're already they consume my content. They follow me. So they're already warm. We don't need to do the convincing. So there's a bit of a different dynamic between not just what you offer but also who you're advertising to in relation to your business. a lot of warm audience advertising we're seeing work well with statics people who have followings organic content as part of their

11:42strategy then static ads are outperforming for for the same reason. So think about your business and really weigh that up. And then also don't be afraid to test. So if you're like I'm not sure like yeah people need to be bought into what we sell and they need to understand it but like some people understand it anyway. So right let's

11:56test both. We're going to test video. We're going to test statics. We're going to see which performs better and then we're not going to stop doing the other one. Really important. We're just then going to lean more into the one that works best. Okay, video performs really well. Let's do some more of that. Static performs really well. Let's do some more of that and have that be a larger proportion of our ad creative mix. With that in mind, one of the absolute keys to scaling ads is working with the right data. Meta ads especially are driven by AI targeting. Bad data means not only

12:22bad ad decisions, but bad AI targeting. Meta tracking is consistently off by 20 to 30% and as much as 50% plus for long-term sales. This leads to that bad data. That's why I want to tell you about Hyros and their new form of attribution called AI swarm data. It fixes this gap and a allows you to make the correct decisions with your ads. B sends the right data to meta. This results in an almost immediate boost to ad ROI via better targeting and better decisions which is why it's used by major players like Alex Hoszi, Tony Robbins, myself, Four Seasons, Playboy W, and thousands of large scale

12:53e-commerce stores. Here's an example. Hyus helps point out gaps in tracking. If I couldn't see this data, I wouldn't be able to scale as effectively. More importantly, it feeds the ad platform the right data for better targeting, cutting your cost to acquire customers. That's why I'm comfortable recommending Hyros. They literally guarantee increased ad ROI or you don't pay. The usual result is around a 10 to 15% increase in ad revenue. And if you're an agency, not only does it get your clients better results, Hires pays up to 40% for lifetime commissions on each client you bring. Even better, they will set it up for you, then help you

13:23optimize ad platform AI targeting with it. Use the link below. The first 15 people to do so will get a 30% discount. Now, here's another important thing to consider. Do we think this trend is likely to continue? Because there's no point adjusting your strategy for something that's temporary and is likely to reverse or change. I actually think it will continue. In fact, what we're not only going to see more of is more statics being more prevalent for more businesses as attention spans continue to contract. But also, I think we're going to see a blurring of the lines between what is a static and what is a

13:53video. So if for example you take a static image and you animate it slightly. So instead of it just being there ready when someone scrolls like the text appears a split second after the background image maybe one of the elements sort of flies in from the left. You you've seen the sort of thing and AI is getting really good at taking those statics and animating them and turning them into what would technically be a short video clip but kind of feels more like an animated static to me. I think

14:19we're going to see a lot more of that. Why? because it has a lot of the advantages that static images have. Get the information over really quickly, but it has one of the big advantages that video has, which is movement. And movement helps grab attention. And if you're scrolling, especially if you're doing it distracted something else, it's like it's more likely to bring you back to to the ad, which is obviously good for advertisers and more likely to help us win. So, we may well be moving to a world where that becomes really common and a best performer. And then we're sort of half and halfing. We're sort of

14:47creating things that are somewhere between statics and videos. And then of course full video ads with like founder or demo or client testimonial absolutely going to place for that and full statics that are just really simple and ready to go as well all within the uh creative mix. So once I saw this in the data and then took some time to really think it through talk with some people it does make a lot of sense and it's very interesting. I never would have predicted this was going to happen uh 5 years ago or so. And I will let you know

15:14if this continues what's like to happen. I'll keep doing polls in my audience looking at our internal data. So, make sure you subscribe for that. And speaking of changes, if you haven't already, you have to check out this video. In that video, I demonstrate a brand new AI based tool, the ads creative studio that Meta has recently

15:29launched in the process of rolling out. It's really cool. I'm a big fan of it. Not a fan of all meta tools, but this one I really like. It's actually going to make making more static ads much, much easier. Go ahead and give it a watch.