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On August 26th I started a thread titled Facebook and Instagram Ads, I think I made a discovery. In it I hypothesized that image ads would actually do better than video ads because of how Facebook prioritized video over image for organic, therefore leaving an opportunity for images to “breakup” the flow and be noticed more.
In the comments several people asked for my results, so here they are…
THE TEST
I posted a video ad (see it at https://fb.me/1Kq8jz0Q1J82TCe) and I posted a image ad (see it at https://fb.me/2jiUvL1IJCguM7O) for our Houston area casting call site CastingCallsHouston.com. I ran no other ads for this market on any other platform during this time.
Both ad sets were placed on Facebook (desktop and mobile feeds), the Audience Network and Instagram. I spent $12 per day on each ad set.
THE RESULTS
On the video ads -
Spent a total of $73.82
Reach (unique people) of 1,997
Impressions of 2,703
Had total views (3 second views) of 2,239
Resulted in 3 conversions (registrations) at a cost of $24.61 per registration
Audience Network had 1.7 views per unique reach (BEST)
Facebook had 1.1 views per unique reach
Instagram had .5 views per unique reach (WORST)
On the image ads -Spent a total of $74.05
Reach (unique impressions) of 3,657
Impressions of 7,409
Resulted in 16 conversions (registrations) at a cost of $4.63 per registration
Audience Network had 624 reach, 0 conversions (WORST)
Facebook had 1,796 reach, 10 conversions, 1 conversion per 180 reach (BEST)
Instagram had 1,720 reach, 6 conversions, 1 conversion per 287
CONCLUSION
PARTIAL verification on my original hypothesis. It appears, at least for my use case, that images work better on all platforms for conversions, where I had assumed that would only be true for Facebook.
It also appears Audience Network is best for video (view wise), not Instagram, as I had thought.
Overall, this leads me to focus more on image ads on Facebook, some more on Instagram, and exclude the Audience Network. For branding and general awareness ads I will use video on the Audience Network.
Some notes -
These ads appeared to the same audiences. So those who saw the videos may have then seen the images, and vice versa. This may have lead to more success on the image ads as a result of the videos helping brand the image ads.
My next test will be the image ad as a standalone with no videos running concurrently.
Open to questions or thoughts.