Social media videos ads are an essential tool in modern advertising, offering a powerful way to capture attention, boost engagement, and educate audiences about your product, services, or brand.
The versatility of a video ad allows marketers to meet potential buyers at every stage of the marketing funnel, from awareness to conversion. Whether you create video ads as short-form clips or longer videos, social media video ads have become a social channel staple for creating an attention grabbing hook that presents your products' value proposition while building trust directly within your user's feed.
Despite its rising popularity, 15% of marketers who don’t use video report not knowing where to start. This up to date guide on video is here to help. We’ll explore proven strategies, practical tips for video, and best practices for leveraging social media video ads effectively across major social media channels. You'll become a video ads pro for social media in no time.
Benefits of Social Media Video Ads
In an era where audiences' attention spans are short and the need for impactful bite-sized video content as part of their social media usage is high, video ads are an integral part of tapping into your existing viewers, understanding their time spent online, and getting your point immediately across to potential customers.
Video ads enable you to build a loyal fanbase for your products and services, giving opportunities to demonstrate use cases of your products in action. Video also lets you implement influencer marketing strategies and engage younger users.
Let’s look at a few more benefits of video ads across major social media platforms.
Engages Potential Users
Globally, most users watch short videos to educate themselves, seek guidance, and connect with their social network to solve a problem, answer their questions, or complete a task. A recent Statista report on top social media video content type by global reach uncovered that 26% of online audiences are seeking educational videos, while 25.8% are on the lookout for tutorials, explainer videos, or how-to videos.
Image by Joseph Mucira from Pixabay
Video ads drives traffic to a specific landing page on your website and increases engagement by positioning your product in front of other users not only looking for answers to their problems, but a product that is demonstrated to help them.
Builds Loyal Customer Base
When viewers are able to put a face to the name behind the brand by watching your Instagram video and accompanying ads, it not only humanizes your product but it creates loyal customers. It's no wonder video content is the second most popular type of social media content, especially when it increases engagement with your target audience.
Encourages Creativity
While the power of an image-based advertisement is often more than enough to convert your customers and move them further along the marketing funnel, video ads allow you to get your creative juices flowing.
From incorporating motion graphics to creating looping videos, by harnessing the creative power of social media video ads, you produce eye-catching videos that interest, educate, and engage viewers without overwhelming them.
It can also be helpful to create multiple versions of the same video ad to suit requirements for social media ads across different platforms. Tailoring your ads' video length, ad types, ad sizes, and aspect ratio to suit different ad placements for the likes of Facebook videos and Instagram video requirements, makes it easier when you go to publish.
Video Categories for Social Media Video Ads
In order to grasp the effectiveness of social media video ads, it’s important to look at the different video format available.
While video format, interactive features, and restrictions vary greatly across platforms, generally they can be divided into long-form and short-form video content. The latter of these ushered in what is often referred to as the goldfish era, in reference to audience attention spans now aligning with that of a goldfish’s memory - approximately seven seconds.
These video format can also take the form of a live video, where your target audience can watch, interact, and respond to your social media video and provide status updates in real-time.
Video Ad Use Cases
Whether you're looking to create robust Facebook video ads, LinkedIn video ads, or Pinterest ads, it's important to get a sense of the use cases for video ads that grab users attention and position your products' value proposition front and center.
Short-form videos and long-form video ads can be used for all sorts of promotional purposes on your social channels and to create emotional connection with potential customers. This can include ad types like:
- Customer testimonials
- Shoppable videos
- Product demos
- Explainer videos
- User-generated content (UGC)
- Influencer collaborations
- Sale promotions
- Webinar and event promotions
- How-to & tutorial videos
39% of marketers have utilized video for the purpose of promoting customer and client testimonials of their products and services, making it the most popular social media use for video marketing across the board. There's also behind the scenes videos, taking your viewers through a day in the life of your company.
Extra tools like good lighting equipment, a lavalier microphone, and editing software like Adobe Premiere can make all the difference when you create these videos. However, when you start producing video content and create video ads, your iPhone is a great starting point for shooting your own videos. From here, you can work your way up to more advanced equipment as your video ad knowledge grows.
Social Media: Ad Strategies and Formats
From Facebook video and Pinterest ads to Instagram stories, we'll now take a closer look at each platform, its video ad offerings, video specs, video length, subcategories of video formats available, restrictions, and unique features.
Meta
Meta (formerly Facebook) offers a robust ad platform and video formats, like Facebook Live. A Facebook video ad showcases specific images, videos, and details about your product and services. In-feed video ads also enable you to highlight your offerings mid-scroll to consumers browsing their Facebook feed.
What’s more, Facebook video ad shares a platform with Instagram, streamlining your video ad capabilities.
For Facebook video ad specs, video clips can last anywhere between 1 second to 241 minutes. For text recommendations, the platform limits for Primary Text range from 50 to 150 characters, while your Facebook video ads headline maxes out at 27 characters.
Once a platform for posting photos of your lunch and pets, social media platform Instagram has since pivoted, incorporating a variety of social media marketing tactics and ad type for Instagram videos.
Replacing IGTV in 2021, Instagram Stories are a social video that let you directly post links, inviting more engagement from viewers to click-through to products and services on your website. Stories disappear after 24 hours or can be saved to your company’s personal profile for longer exposure periods.
Image by Insta Like USA from Pixabay
There’s also Instagram Reels, first introduced in August 2020 in response to the rising popularity of TikTok. The tool mirrors YouTube Shorts in many ways, its 15 to 30 second videos great for creating bite-sized entertaining video ads.
Your Instagram ads' video length can be up to 60 minutes long and your caption length includes up to 11,000 characters. While this gives you lots of wiggle room to get creative with your description, keep in mind your videos max file size and how your video length might effect your ability to drive traffic. Instagram's video ad offerings also features an in-depth audio library, letting you choose background music to accompany videos uploaded to your account.
TikTok
First launched in 2016 by Chinese internet tech company ByteDance, video giant TikTok became the most-downloaded app in the world in 2022, and would eventually go on to hit 1.7 billion monthly active users in 2023.
TikTok videos fundamentally shaped the internet and the way social media users expect their video (and subsequent video ads) to be delivered to them, especially via their mobile devices. From authentic, user-generated content to ads that feel organic to its younger user base, especially young adults, Tiktok’s business models hinges on a trifecta of media, advertising, and e-commerce. These elements combined let you transform your video ad into more personal offerings.
TikTok video ad features a variety of ad placements, including in-feed footage, paid ads, interactive ads, industry ad solutions, as well as interactive enhancements. These each have their own video specs and video length.
What’s more, its high engagement metrics and powerful algorithm, partnered with its Ads Manager, makes the video behemoth a great platform for positioning your company in front of new audiences, and increasing your video ad conversion rates.
Check out our comprehensive TikTok video advertising guide to explore the benefits, tips, tricks and examples when it comes to video advertising on this popular platform.
YouTube
A pioneer in long-form video content, YouTube first began charting a course for video when it launched in 2005. However, the platform really entered the spotlight in 2006 when it was acquired by Google for $1.65 billion.
Image by Szabo Viktor on Unsplash
While there’s still plenty of long-form videos across the platform, YouTube has expanded into short-form video offerings too, like YouTube Shorts. Additionally its pre-roll, mid-roll, and bumper ad formats let you create attention-grabbing video content. YouTube's skippable video ad plays before, during, and after your user clicks on your video. YouTube videos also give viewers the choice to automatically play one video after the other.
X
Given X (formerly Twitter) has always stressed the importance of brevity, it doubles as the ideal location for short-form video content. X’s video advertising formats range from promoted ads with its own set of sub-categories, to more mass-reach placements like X Takeovers and X Live.
X also gives marketers ample measurement and analytics tools to determine your video ads performance, as well as outlines its own set of best practices for marketing your video on the platform.
Since 2016, Pinterest has been offering video marketing, adding live stream-style video content in 2022. Close to a billion videos are watched on Pinterest every day, showcasing consumers are not only looking to save inspiration on the spot, but are looking to take action to bring their inspiration to life.
Not only is Pinterest the place for how-to, educational videos for concocting saved recipes, following makeup tutorials, and handcrafting Christmas wreaths but it also drives social media users back to your website’s landing pages, especially if they save a pinned video showcasing your product.
Pinterest’s standard width for its video specs are a minimum of four seconds and a maximum of 15 minutes, while your video title can run up to 100 characters.
Don’t forget that part of Pinterest’s initial appeal with its digital pin boards were the stunning visuals. Ensuring your video ad’s content visually captures your brand and drives your product.
Snap
Let’s face it - Snapchat walked so TikTok could run, yet Snapchat still holds a torch as a video content behemoth across the social media landscape, especially for its engaging, quick-hitting video ads tailored to Millennials and Gen Z.
Image by Alexander Shatov on Unsplash
Rebranded to Snap in September 2016, Snapchat brought short-term video to the forefront in the early 2010’s, introducing legions of fans to beloved dog and flower crown filters and the coveted “snap streak.” Its variety of video ad formats come in several styles including Story Ads, Collection Ads, Commercials, AR Lenses, and AR Filters.
Ideal for reaching new customers, Snapchat’s Video ads are great for increasing awareness and garnering more visitors to your website. For video specs, your brand can be up to 25 characters with spaces and your headline, up to 34 characters with spaces.
Its vertical aspect ratio of 9:16 is iconic and remains the same across its ads. However, Snapchat has become more generous with its video length, expanding to capture videos anywhere from 3 to 180 seconds.
Sora
Last but certainly not least is Open AI’s Sora. While this one might not be on your radar yet, it’s probably a good idea to bring yourself up to speed with the latest and greatest in AI text-to-video generation.
From the creators of ChatGPT, Sora’s text-to-video model serves as a user-friendly, scalable tool that creates human-quality work. It’s so effective, Hollywood actor Tyler Perry hit pause on an $800 million expansion of his Atlanta studio upon seeing its mind-blowing video developments.
As with other Generative AI tools, utilizing the tool as part of your video ad lineup will be about ensuring the content you create as part of your video advertising efforts, remains unique, high quality, and engaging.
Video Ad Best Practices
Below, we’ve highlighted a few general best practices for your next video ad, applicable across the different platforms. From video specs to video length and video plays, these key points will help you to drive traffic via your video, capture your audience's attention, and create an emotional connection with your services.
Understand your audience. Not only is it important to get a clear idea of your unique audience demographic for the purpose of your video, but also where they currently sit within your marketing funnel. By creating impactful videos that fit the demographic of the platform, meet the goals, desires, needs, and pain points of your customer demographic, and suit various stages of the marketing funnel, you not only understand your audience but provide a clear message in your video and keep your viewers interested in what you have to offer.
Maintain optimal video length. While each social channel offers a a range of time lengths for each video template, ensure you meet the sweet spot by staying within the channel’s limits and max file size. There’s nothing worse than potential customers clicking off too soon because of your video length.
Include impactful CTAs. When potential users of your product or service click on your video ads, what’s the primary goal you want them to complete? It might be to click-through to a landing page on your website, subscribe to your newsletter, simply share videos, or like and follow your account. Focus your efforts to ensure your video CTA is clear and engaging yet easy to accomplish on the part of the viewer.
Account for accessibility. Your audience will likely have different requirements when it comes to their social media usage, and by extension, viewing your video ads, both on desktop and mobile devices. Implementing good accessibility practices like closed captioning, on screen text, alt-text for both static images as well as a simple video, and descriptions, can help viewers with impairments or accessibility issues.
Consider the ‘no sound experience’. This one ties in closely with accessibility, but it can also help you to get clear on creating effective video ads for marketing purposes. Ask yourself this - if your video ad was watched without sound, would your viewer still understand the intent behind it? If yes, you’ve achieved a positive ‘no sound’ experience. If not, it might help to get clearer on your video goals and identify content gaps for improvement prior to posting your final video ad.
Optimize for search. Similar to how you might optimize a social media post for search, you’ll need to do the same for your video ads. Ensure your video length and video specs correspond with the platforms' requirements, incorporate relevant keywords, write clear video descriptions, and choose accurate video titles for your ads. Once posted, utilize web analytics and performance marketing to understand how your video ads are performing and ensure they are meeting the social media algorithms' requirements.
Maximize your Video Marketing on Social Media with Teamtown
By using these practical tips to adapt your video ads to suit the unique features and strengths of each social media channel, you can use video to reach the right audience in the right way.
Each platform serves as a helpful tool and offers distinct opportunities for video ad creativity and brand visibility. By leveraging shorter videos, live streams, explainer videos, and interactive formats, you can foster authentic connections with your target audience and use video ads to showcase your brand values at every stage of the marketing funnel.
Whether you’re looking for assistance with editing multiple videos, a short-form video ad, or designing the latest of your ad campaigns, Teamtown is here to help. Book a demo today to get started and make video ads work for you.
