Facebook’s New Video Creation Tools Are Just in Time for the Holiday Season

At Cobalt Digital Marketing, there are three things that we wholeheartedly believe:

1. SEO is ever-changing and businesses need to change their digital marketing strategies as needed to succeed.
2. Creating video ads for social media marketing isn’t easy.
3. The ending of Inception wasn’t a dream.

While we’re still debating Inception, Facebook is challenging our second belief with their new video creation tools that rolled out recently. These interesting new tools are geared towards making mobile-first video ads a more streamlined process.

The Skinny On Facebook’s New Video Creation Tools

Facebook had been teasing for a while that they had plans to roll out some new video creation tools. Those tools made their debut to eager advertisers this July. What could possibly encourage Facebook to provide such helpful tools, despite all the recent changes the company has implemented?

We’ll give you a hint: it’s two words and 11 letters.

Mobile-first!

Over the past few years—and especially throughout 2018—recommendations from all the heavy hitters in the SEO industry are hammering this one point home: Optimize your website and digital marketing plan for mobile devices!

It comes as no surprise that mobile shopping and searches are quickly becoming popular, and many experts agree that if you aren’t optimizing your digital marketing plan to cater to these new types of visitors, you’re essentially throwing a lot of money away.

These new tools have, thankfully, been rolled out right before the holiday shopping season which starts…now. Nearly 50% of consumers are going to start their holiday shopping before October even kicks in and these tools can be used to capture the market’s attention, especially those on mobile.

Get visual. Inspire. Get customers to your e-commerce site or brick-and-mortar shop.

So What Kind of Tools Are We Talking About Here?

Here is what you can expect when working with these new tools:

The Video Creation Kit

This kit helps advertisers create mobile-optimized video ads with existing images and text. This grants the advertiser the ability to create these videos framed at a 1:1 for feeds and 9:16 for stories published on Facebook and Instagram.

This kit also includes four different types of templates under its Publishing Tools that can found in a business or brand’s Facebook Page. They can be used to:

• Promote and/or sell a product—or multiple products—during an allotted 6 seconds.
• Feature product benefits during an allotted 15 seconds.
• Encourage product discovery during an allotted 15 seconds.

The Video Cropping Tool

As the name would suggest, this tool helps advertisers crop videos to align with Facebook’s recommended aspect ratios such as:

• 1:1 and 4:5 for feed
• 16:9 for in-stream
• 9:16 for stories

The Animate Option

This option helps advertisers create a video from a still image automatically. This option shines when making a static, or unchanging, ad or company logos. The animate option is accessible in the same location where you would normally boost your posts. Advertisers can use the automated version or customize another one if they would like.

What Kind of Impact Will These Tools Have?

According to a blog post published by Facebook, it was found that “mobile-first creative has a 27 percent higher likelihood of driving brand lift and 23 percent higher likelihood of driving message association compared to video ads that are not optimized for mobile.”

To add a little context to the above statement, according to Google, brand lift is a “measurement of the direct impact your YouTube ads are having on perceptions and behaviors throughout the consumer journey.” While we are talking about Facebook and not YouTube here, the notion is still the same.

Brand lift gives you better insight into how your video ad content is impacting meaningful metrics—like watch time, views, likes, shares, and comments—and other key areas like brand awareness, brand interest, purchase intent, and favorability to name a few. With these metrics provided in near-real time, making adjustments to improve your video ad is made easier.

In short, Facebook’s new video creation tools can help you become more recognizable to potential customers that use mobile devices while giving you insight on what works and what doesn’t in near-real time.

With these new tools at our disposal, your expert digital marketing catalysts at Cobalt Digital Marketing can help you make this holiday season one for the books.

There is no doubt that these new tools can help you initiate a better social media campaign through Facebook, but advertising on social media isn’t a “set it and forget it” kind of practice. You need to be able to keep up with industry news and changes, and you need to be able to adapt. What works one day may not work the next, and that can be overwhelming to keep up with, especially when you are running your own business.

Luckily, our job is to ensure that your business’ earning potential is maximized through the power of digital marketing. And no one does that better than the catalysts at Cobalt Digital Marketing.

Contact us at 956-303-6555 to customize your winning Cobalt Formula™ today.