How to Evaluate the Effectiveness of Your Facebook Video Ad

So, you used a video in your recent Facebook Ad/Boost and the results are in, but what do they really mean? Judging the performance of your video ad can go from overwhelming to simple if you know which metrics to pay attention to.

The Facebook Ads Manager has a few built-in reports that can give you all the information you need. You can toggle between these reports here by clicking ‘Column.’

Performance Report

The first ‘Columns’ selection to look at is ‘Performance.’ Here you’ll get a snapshot of results including:

• Results: The number of times your ad achieved an outcome, based on the objective and settings you selected. For example, if your ads objective was ‘Link Clicks,’ the amount shown here will represent total link clicks.

• Reach: The number of people who saw your ads at least once. Reach is different from impressions, which may include multiple views of your ads by the same people.

• Impressions: The number of times your ads were on screen.

• Cost Per Result: The average cost per result from your ads.

• Amount Spent: The estimated total amount of money you've spent on your campaign, ad set or ad during its schedule.

Now, we’re sure you’re asking, “What’s a good cost per result or reach?” for example. Without familiarity to business or product, it’s hard to say what a good cost per result would be. It depends heavily on what the desired objective and subsequent result was. Potential results are link clicks, ad engagements, app installs, video views, lead generation and Facebook messages. Each of these results have different values and this value differs by business and product advertised. For example, a website click has a different value to an online retailer than it does to a restaurant. Without having pre-assigned a value to each result, a good way to judge your ads cost per result is to compare it to other ads with the same objective.  

Video Engagement Report  

The next ‘Column’ selection to take a look at is ‘Video Engagement.’ Here you’ll find data specific to a video view length and percent completion.

• X ‘Second Video Views’: This is the number of people who watched X consecutive seconds of your video. Facebook breaks this down at the 2, 3 and 10 second marks.

• Thruplay:  When the video is played to 97% completion or up to 15 seconds, whichever comes sooner. For example, if your video is :30, a thruplay is at the :15 mark whereas if your video is :16, the thruplay is :15.52 seconds (97%).

• Cost Per Thruplay: The average cost per thruplay of your video. This is spend divided by total # of thruplays.

• Video Plays at X%: This is the # of people who completed X percent of your video. Facebook breaks this down at the 25, 50, 75, 95 and 100% marks. You’ll see that the number decreases as you near 100%.

• Video Plays: The number of times the video was played. Even a half second play would count here. This is different than Video Views which is any/all views longer than 3-seconds.

With these metrics, you can determine first and foremost if your video is engaging. To answer this question, look at how video plays decrease across the %s. If you see a steep decline between the 25% and 50% mark, this may be an indication that your video was not entertaining, and people simply stopped watching. It is however normal to see gradual drop-off from 25 to 100% completion. For a :30 ad, we’d look for 75% of those who started the video to complete 95% of it.

Just like with Cost per Result, Cost per Thruplay (CPT) Is difficult to judge. The value of thruplay depends on what you’re selling and the content of the specific video. Again, it’s important to compare these results to other video campaigns you’ve ran with different video ads or targeting. Ideally, the CPT would be in line with these.

In Closing

Using these two reports, you can answer key questions about your video performance. If you find this overwhelming, or the Facebook Campaign Manager overwhelming as a whole, you’re not alone. As Facebook’s advertising program has developed, it’s become ever more difficult for non-digital marketing professionals to manage advertising efforts and effectively evaluate results.  On the other hand, a social media marketing and advertising strategy has become essential for every small business. If you’re interested in taking advantage of Facebook’s the low-cost advertising opportunities but uninterested in learning for yourself, it’s best to turn to a professional such as Trifecta Marketing Services. We’re Facebook Blueprint Certified and have helped many small businesses reach their social media goals. To learn more about our custom social media marketing services go to https://www.trifectamarketingservices.com/social-media