The BEST Facebook Ad FORMAT (NEW DATA)

0:00most Facebook advertisers have heard that video ads is the only way to succeed with Facebook ads you have to be using the video Facebook ad format to see great results but is that really true and if it isn't true which ad format actually produces the best results when it comes to Facebook and Instagram ads want to find out I polled my audience on YouTube now my audience is full of people that are into my videos which are Facebook and Instagram advertising related to a very good audience we had over 1200 responses and here are the results so the first thing I need to highlight about this before I get into the

0:32specific results is the fact that I mentioned both Facebook and Instagram in the question so I said which facebook slash Instagram ad format performs best for you that's very important because there are some differences between the platforms I wanted to make sure that your attention was drawn to that now let's get into the data so the options that I gave were video image slideshow Carousel and other there are a few other options you can play around with depending on the type of campaign you're creating for example what it is that you're actually advertising but you've got those four main categories in video image slideshow and Carousel now what we

1:02can obviously see is that the most popular the ad format that produces the best results for the most people is video so that's probably unsurprising to most people they've always been told it's video video video video but what is really interesting is that it's only the best performing option 53 of the time almost half the people that are responding to this poll are not seeing their best results from the video ad format with their Facebook and Instagram ads and that destroys the myth that video always this works best here we can see that 47 of the time almost half that's not the case so what does this

1:35data tell us we've got video at 53 image at 31 has an absolute minimum you need to test a series of videos and you need to test a series of images because there's a very good chance that one of those two ad formats but you can't necessarily predict which one ahead of time is going to produce the best results for you if you've just been doing video absolutely you want to test image if you've just been using images absolutely you want to test videos now of course there are some other Facebook ad formats here Carousel comes in with nine percent so almost one in ten times

2:05Carousel produces the best results for the people that follow me that are running Facebook and Instagram ads so it would absolutely be a good idea something I would recommend to test Carousel maybe not the first thing you want to test with your Facebook and Instagram ad campaigns because it's less likely to be your best performing option but definitely something to add into your optimization calendar and sort of circle a time when you go and that's when we're going to test Carousel because it may well work for us now when it comes to the best Facebook ad format the truth is it's going to be dependent on what it is that you offer you need to

2:34match the right ad format to the types of products and services that you sell and I've talked a lot on my Channel about that there's lots of people advocating for a one-size-fits all this always works the best approach and that's just not true it's not true with ad formats it's not true with targeting and we can see that from this data some businesses are going to see great results for video others are going to see great results with image and there's other businesses that see great results with other options as well so to help direct you and give you an indication of what type of AD you should be focusing

3:01on depending on your specific products or Services There are rules of thumb that you can use if you've got this type of product you want to use this format if you've got this type of service you want to use this format I'll explain that in a second before I do want to quickly let you know about our done for you Facebook and Instagram advertising services so my company can create manage and optimize campaigns for you if you're interested in finding out more there is a link in the video description below click on that you can book a call with one of my team members and we can

3:23explain more about the service and how we can take the work off your hands and help you get better results so go ahead book call hopefully you get a chance to work together so how does our data as a Facebook and Instagram advertising agency differ from what my audience has put forward here because there are some differences between what we see running hundreds of campaigns for our clients and what's shown here they're not huge but there are some differences firstly I want to highlight slideshow so only two percent of people said that slideshow was their best performing ad format that would be much higher for us we'd

3:51probably be in the 15 maybe even the highest 20 range we use slideshow ads a lot particularly for e-commerce businesses wanting to advertise a number of different products that sort of thing now of course there is a sort of Gray Line when does a video become a slideshow and vice versa so I imagine that there are a lot of people that said video was their best performing ad format when the videos they're using are quite slideshow formatty originally when meta first made slideshows available as a sort of AD format to create within your ad account they were called slideshows and that was sort of made quite clear that it was separate in the

4:23language within your Facebook ad account now they're very much referred to as video included in the video so perhaps that's kind of what's going on on there I imagine that if I talk to the people that respond to this poll in more detail you'd find that some of those people that responded video as their best Facebook ad format would probably be better categorized as SlideShare that might account for some of the discrepancy between our numbers and what we see um in this data here we would also see a close a less of a gap between video and image so here we've got a 22 difference between video and image I'd

4:51say video is still going to be our most popular ad format but it will probably be a 10 Gap so if you put some of all of the percentages into slideshow and then reduce video somewhat that's probably getting closer to what we see as a Facebook ads agency but again this data here is pretty close to what we see and I I'm pretty confident that this could be extrapolated out to Facebook and Instagram advertising in gen now as I mentioned there are ways in which you can work out which Facebook ad format is likely to deliver the best results for your business depending on the products

5:21and services that you offer and in general we like to match the size of the ask with the complexity of the offer so if you think about these four main categories of Facebook ad format in a sort of complexity Continuum so right at the most simple we've got image then we get into Carousel which is basically multiple images with some more information then we get into slideshow which has more going on animation can be longer and then we get into video so we've got those four sort of in a complexity Continuum image being the most simple video being the most complex if we are asking for something that's

5:52quite a big ask either requires a relatively big commitment in terms of time from your prospect or money we want to go with video so let's say you're a service based business and you're advertising your services and the first step is for them to come to your place of business and have a a meeting with you even if it's free to find out more about whatever that's going on well that's quite a big ask people have got a you know book time out of their calendar they've got to travel too they've got to do all this so we're much more likely to want to use video in that scenario and

6:20the reason why is because we need the extra information we can provide in the video format to sell that action if someone's going to take a big action when making a big ask of our prospects we need to tell them why we need to sell it we need to say yes you're coming in but you'll find out all this information it's really beneficial and here's where you should do it here's where you should do it his way should do it okay that's why we need the more complex ad formats because you could put in more information and if you think about how those ad formats go an image you've got

6:46not that much information Carousel you've got more but still not tons slideshow you've got more still and video you can put in loads if you want to particularly with longer format videos now if we're offering something that's really simple let's say it's an impulse purchase eCommerce product that's relatively inexpensive people can just click on a few buttons get it ordered it's not going to cost them a lot we probably want to go with a really simple ad format like image and then of course if you think about those two offers being at either end of the spectrum then you've got the options in the middle and you can think about where

7:14your offer fits in that you know a free Zoom call for example is easier than a physical meeting particularly if the prospect has to travel so you can knock it down and move these things around and have a think about how this works now the reason why you want to keep things really simple when you're advertising say an impulse purchase or even piece of content that you just want people to click through and consume like a blog post or a video or something like that you want to keep it really simple with it with an image ad that's often the best format is because when you use the

7:41more complex ad formats things like slideshows and videos most people won't bother to stick around to consume that ad they will see it's a video and they'll just scroll past it or whatever within the first second or maybe even less you're going to have a big drop off now if it's something that you don't need all that information for you don't need to provide all these reasons because they can just take a glance at it and know whether that's something they'd be interested or not you don't want all that drop off because you're going to end up with a small percentage of people interacting with your ad and

8:10going on to take that action whereas as we already said with the more complex offers you need all that so even though yes you're still going to have lots of drop-off when you have a complex ad format but because you're asking for quite a lot a little image isn't going to get the job done so that's really the logic as to why that works with that said it's absolutely a good idea to test so even if you think well my offer is relatively complex you know we've got a relatively expensive product or service or the first step in the sales funnel is asking for quite a big thing for the

8:38person to commit to you still want a test image because you never know different Industries operate differently perhaps you've got an image that can convey the information very cleverly which case that might be a good option to go and likewise we see um lots of e-commerce businesses with say impulse purchase type products or even advertising pieces of content used successfully with single image ads maybe carousels things like that but every now and then we will test a video because you may be able to find a video that is so engaging that keeps people watching it you don't have too much of that drop off I was talking about and it can

9:08outperform so those are some of the guidelines that you can follow and hopefully that can help direct your efforts if you're at the more complex end start with video if you're more the simple and start with image but at some point make sure you go ahead and test those other Facebook ad formats you may well find a winner that wasn't what you originally expected it to be and that could be absolutely huge for your Facebook is advertising success because you have to think about how this works a 20 Improvement in your return on ad spend might allow you to spend 10 times as much profitably which is a really big

9:38deal as you can see from the data in this poll video ads do not always produce the best results when it comes to Facebook and Instagram advertising that's a Facebook ads method has been around for ages there are tons more and it's likely that you've heard some of these myths that you're implementing actions within your campaigns based on bad information so I'd strongly recommend you check out this video where I go through 50 Facebook ad myths explain why they aren't true and what you should be doing instead well worth a quick watch