On Facebook, viewers might organically see videos in their feed if they’ve liked a page, if a friend shares the video, or if they’ve been targeted with a sponsored video. When you share video on Facebook, you don’t get 5 seconds to capture viewers’ interest, as you might on YouTube. Instead, you have about 1 second to keep them watching.
This cooking demonstration video from BuzzFeed’s Tasty page uses the square dimensions and on-screen text, and has lots of action.
Facebook accepts the 16:9 aspect ratio and most other dimensions of video, including the square format made famous by Instagram. More than half of Facebook’s users are on Mobile, so rather than add black bars to a square video to make it fit the 16:9 aspect ratio, Facebook enlarges it to fill the space on the mobile feed. Because it commands more mobile screen space, a square video is more likely to be watched.
Facebook video always starts on mute unless users opt in to audio or select the video on mobile. Because 85% of all Facebook Videos are watched without sound, use on-screen text plus powerful imagery to grab your audience’s attention. People should know what your video is about without ever hearing the audio.
If your video includes an audio voiceover or people talking, always upload a custom captions file. Facebook has started to transcribe audio for its ads, but it’s best to double-check that the text is accurate. While custom closed captions are great for YouTube because they improve SEO, they’re essential for Facebook if you want to communicate anything in depth.
Like YouTube, you should upload a custom thumbnail for your Facebook video. The thumbnail appears before and/or after the video in different situations on mobile and desktop.
Here’s a good short Facebook Super Bowl ad from Budweiser. It gets right to the point with images and text, and works well without audio or with the upbeat soundtrack. As with all Facebook videos under 30 seconds, the video loops automatically.
Facebook videos that are shorter than 30 seconds loop automatically.
Tech-oriented clothing manufacturer SCOTTeVEST shows that you can demonstrate features silently using text on Facebook. However, this video might be even more effective if they clipped off the first 10 seconds of branding and started with “Can Your Gear….”
SCOTTeVEST uses on-screen text effectively in this video.
Facebook video can be up to 2 hours in length and file sizes can be up to 4GB with a frame rate of up to 30 fps. The recommended maximum resolution is 1280 x 720.
This post first appeared on Facebook Insight For Facebook Ads Manager, please read the originial post: here
