Facebook has been quite vocal about its plans to put videos at the center of social media. However, the social networking site had to convince advertisers that their commercials can work in the News Feed, where videos play automatically in silent mode. The main aim is to make the ad understandable to users who view it without sound.
Facebook and its silent ads plan
Facebook has been urging brands to edit and reframe commercials to resonate within the mute environment, whereas advertisers have questioned whether such efforts are worth it, reports The New York TImes.
Neel Williams, creative director at the Martin Agency, said the social networking site is an important platform for a lot of their clients, so thinking about how ads are going to play on the platform without any sound is coming into the “discussion earlier and earlier in the process.” According to Williams, the social networking site has shared several tips with the Martin Agency on how to edit ads effectively, and it has underlined the importance of catching the attention of users in the first three seconds of a video.
Mark D’Arcy, chief creative officer of Facebook’s Creative Shop, said, “If you’re a creative person, this is an extraordinary time to be in the opening chapters of quite an extraordinary development platform.”
Questions about Facebook’s data
According to Facebook, more than 500 million users watch videos on its platform daily, and 50% of the time, the viewers have the sound on. However, the actual numbers are different, according to the Martin Agency, which said their data showed that around 94% of the video ads on Facebook are viewed silently, reports The New York Times.
Tech companies like Twitter, Snapchat and Facebook have been working continuously to show advertisers that their videos can be as effective as television marketing, even if they are played for just a few seconds or on mute. The challenges of displaying ads on social media platforms that are not suitable for all will surely be discussed at Advertising Week, a top industry gathering that starts in Manhattan on Monday, the newspaper notes.
After Facebook was compelled to apologize last week for a mistake in the way it estimated video viewership, its executives will possibly have to field questions on how it measures the success of video advertisements. The mistake overstated how much time its users spend watching videos on average. For more than two years, the wrong numbers were presented to partners, including publishers and advertisers.
