Nielsen Study: The Value of Video Ads on Facebook

By now, you probably know you have the option to create ads on Facebook to go beyond the organic reach you typically get on the social network. Facebook provides advertisers with many options for reaching their target audiences. One option is video views, which allows advertisers to tell their story through Facebook video ads. As digital video consumption grows, many brands are turning to video ads. However, not many advertisers know the true value that video can deliver on its own, especially in ads.

Facebook marketing science team commissioned Nielsen, a global measurement and media company that is the number once source for providing consumer insights and data, to take a closer look at Facebook video ads. They found that Facebook users are impacted more by video ads, even before viewing them for a few seconds.

We uncovered more details from the study in a recent Facebook for Business post. Facebook writes that the amount of content found online and in the News Feed “changed how people consumed content, giving them the power to decide what content (including ads) warrants their attention.” In addition, Facebook mentioned “people respond differently to videos. Some people see the video but don’t stick around to watch it. Others watch part of the video and move on. “ The question that comes up is “how do you quantify the total value of video ads online, where reach and views are different?”

In the same post, the social network outlined some key findings from the Nielsen study:

“Results show that from the moment a video ad was viewed (even before one second), lift happened across ad recall, brand awareness, and purchase consideration. That means even people who never watched the video, but did see the impression, were still impacted by the ad. And, as expected, lift increased the longer people watch the ad.”

“Then our marketing science team looked at both the lift data from Nielsen and the number of people who watched for varying lengths of time to estimate campaign value at different lengths of view.

That data shows that people who watched under three seconds of the video ad created up to 47 percent of the total campaign value, and people who watched for fewer than 10 seconds created up to 74 percent, depending on the metric. That means that while lift continued to increase the longer people watched, people didn’t have to watch a whole video to be affected by the ad. Even video views under 10 seconds effectively build awareness and drive purchase intent.”

Here’s What Facebook Provided as Takeaways for Marketers:

As people consume digital content differently, it’s clear that video view counts alone don’t tell advertisers enough about the value driven from digital video ads. Marketers should experiment with shorter ad creative to drive value for their brand, keeping in mind that value increases the longer people watch. And as always, advertisers should continue optimizing ads for campaign goals, but going forward, they also need to look deeper than view counts to measure total campaign value.

Every part of a video view — from the initial impression to a complete video view and everything in between — drives value. Understanding this helps advertisers build content and evaluate success.

What are your thoughts on Nielsen’s findings? How do Facebook video ads currently impact you as a consumer?