Most marketers have always listed image ad campaigns as the best advertising format. Looking at it, should this be the case now?

In comparison to image ad formats, video ad formats, and other ad formats, the advantage of an image ad format is that it is not only concise but it can also directly convey the most important information to its users. In contrast, video ad format may be difficult in presenting all the content that the advertisement wants to deliver to its users at first. Moreover, a few months ago and earlier, the CPM of an image ad campaign was generally significantly lower than that of a video ad campaign. In other words, considering the advertising cost, an image ads campaign still seems to be a better choice.
But now this situation seems to have had changed.

According to statistics, more than 1.25 billion people watch videos on Facebook every month, accounting for almost half of the time people use the app. This suggests that people may be more willing to spend time browsing videos at present, perhaps because the widespread of covid-19 forces people to spend more time on the internet than ever before. As the data shows, the average time that a person watches videos per week has increased to two hours more than the year before.

Moreover, in the past few months, in comparison of the two advertising formats, we will find that the cost of video ads campaign is decreasing significantly, even lower than that of image ads campaign.

It can be seen from this figure that when the advertising budget is the same as the audience’s choice, the CTR of the two formats is almost the same, but the CPM of the video ads campaign is significantly lower than that of the image ad campaign, making video ads campaign obtain more hits at a lower cost. Of course, this may be a coincidence, but it is undeniable that the advertising cost of a video ad campaign is significantly reducing.

“By using striking visuals and sounds, video captures our senses in a way that no other ad format really can—which is why making use of video ads on social channels has been proven to be hugely beneficial for engagement metrics.”
—Nolah the CMO, Stephen Light

At present, YouTube is the most popular channel for video marketers. After all, the platform is specially designed for people to watch and upload videos. However, Facebook unexpectedly ranked second on the list. By default, social networks are not video-sharing platforms, but the facts have proved that this type of advertising has the highest participation among its users.

Moreover, today’s busy consumers may not have time to read the price of the product or its related functions, but they are more likely to watch fascinating videos. In this way, video and Facebook can be said to be a perfect match. Our e-commerce brand can use the advantage of putting video ads on the platform to attract the attention of the audience and transfer the customers to our online store.

Facebook has a strong user base of 2.6 billion, this may cause potential users to overlap with each other. However, we can use videos to screen out people interested in our products, directly show them the appearance of the product, why they need the product, and teach them how to use the product.
This is also why nearly 60% of marketers say video ads are better than Facebook’s single picture advertisements.

Of course, whether to choose an image ad or a video ad, it’s still a matter of opinion. Through data and analysis, it is concluded that video advertising is getting better and better and has a very good prospect.

“Video ads are a great opportunity to have a two-way dialogue with your customers, so don’t waste it. Consider how you can use the video ad as a spot to show real people using the product or service.”
—Darren Litt, co-founder of Hiya Health

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