What Facebook Wants You to Know About Mobile Advertising

Facebook Marketing Science and Facebook Creative Shop have teamed up to analyze their own third-party research. They wanted to understand how user behavior affects marketing and develop creative strategies to push the boundaries of Facebook mobile advertising.

Both teams used more than two thousand advertisements and 12 separate studies on how people interact with their mobile environment. Just imagine, these studies were conducted for two years around the world and were consolidated into one report.

It should be quite interesting and informative. Let’s check it out!

Companies still create advertisements in accordance with the traditions of television or even print. This is true despite the fact that people consume content on mobile platforms differently than on other platforms.

Analysis of 800 videos from 2015-2016 showed 22% of videos can determine what they are about without sound.

The future cannot fit within the framework of the past and advertisers need new forms of opportunities. Based on the described changes, we made assumptions that would help marketers create within a mobile environment, taking into account the changed behavior of users.

Here’s What You Should Know About Facebook Mobile Advertising

Takeaway #1: Use the Data as Inspiration

The most important task of the creative brief is to inspire the creative team, giving it an understanding of the target audience.

The research data can give an idea of what kind of audience it is and what its context is, and this, in turn, can become the basis of a creative idea. Such data can provide the necessary information about a certain platform, or become the basis for an advertising campaign or idea about a product.

The main difficulty in working with topic data is that there can be an incredible number of stats, facts, terms, etc. Therefore, the Facebook team created a process that allows you to configure the search and filter out unnecessary information.

  • Identify the audience. These are the users who are interested in you; the audience you are targeting most often.

  • Establish a hypothesis for your audience. The hypothesis forms the basis for the entire process. Usually, the hypothesis is prompted by your inner flair or by clarifying a question that arose from brainstorming or an individual advertising department employee.

  • Use the data to prove or disprove the hypothesis. By applying the data to a narrower thematic area of your hypothesis, you can prove or disprove it.

Takeaway #2: Rethink the Storytelling

The days when we could spend 20-50 seconds blasting users with slogans have come and gone. People have already developed a reflex to skip mobile advertising.

It is very important to express the idea of the brand as early as possible, and it is better to do it in the videos that will appear in the news feed. This is the only way to keep the fingers of users from further scrolling.

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If companies adopt some of the ideas of the best TV commercials for the current mobile environment, how would this affect the development of advertising thought?

We see how many brands experiment with speed, rhythm, and length to figure out how to get attention as early as possible and survive in the medium of newsfeeds.

Next, we’ll look at several ways in which you can change the narrative mode to maximize the effect of Facebook mobile advertising.

  • Prevent scrolling. You have a couple of seconds only. It is very difficult to capture a viewer’s attention. Facebook’s team suggests two ways to cope with this problem. The first way is to create advertising with a “bait.” It will capture the attention of the user from the very beginning. The second way is that the video should prompt the audience’s confidence as soon as possible.

  • Balance your brand. In addition to demonstrating the brand, the method of its integration is also important. In commercials with the lowest performance indicators and the highest-quality videos, the brand was equally mentioned as early as possible.

  • Choose stories, not seconds. How long will video advertising be optimal for newsfeeds? There is no significant connection between the duration of advertising and the percentage of videos watched. The content of advertising and its relevance are the most important factors that influence how long a person watches the video.

Takeaway #3: Focus on the Visual Series

When describing the second change in the consumption of content, people select visual information when communicating in a mobile environment.

Today users practically speak a new language and marketers wonder how to use visual information to create effective advertising for a news feed. To find out the answer to this question, the Facebook team investigated photo and video advertising.

Studying how brands could achieve greater visual expressiveness for display, such as in mobile advertising on Instagram, the Facebook team conducted a neuromarketing study. Based on three brands, the company figured out the role of text and images in attracting people’s attention.

The research showed that for the new brands, the advertisement turned out to be effective, which combined both text and visual series. In turn, for the long-known brands, it is possible to use a visual content only. This is enough to make the advertisement memorable.

Takeaway #4: Allocate Resources for Your Facebook Mobile Advertising Campaign

The information viewed on mobile devices causes a completely different cognitive response compared to the content for television. Thus, mobile campaigns should not be perceived only in the context of large TV campaigns. Differences in user behavior should determine the structure of the entire campaign.

In the offline world, the right proportion of resources is also important. When newsfeeds are personalized, content types are different. As in the case of Facebook and Instagram, you need to rethink how you will distribute your efforts. Combining the formats of online mobile advertising safely influences its effectiveness.

Takeaway #5: Develop Integrated Campaigns for Maximum Effect

Not all mobile platforms are the same, and not all of them lead to the same experience of consuming content. So should advertisers create different advertising formats depending on the choice of platform?

The advert with high-performance indicators for Instagram was as effective as advertisements created specifically for Instagram, taking into account community trends.

What is the main conclusion? Qualitatively created advertising will show high efficiency regardless of the context of the platform. When you create advertising for your platform, you simultaneously invest in all platforms that have a news feed!

When you take the needs of users into account, you use the capabilities of digital tools to target their interests. Skillful use of the features of the platform and its nuances can be the basis. It will make it possible to turn just a good advert for the news feed into cool content.

Overall Conclusion: More Experimentation and More Planning

Over the past decade, we have seen significant changes in how people consume content, especially mobile content.

  • The experience of content consumption on mobile platforms is not traditionally linear and leads to faster and a more frequent and personalized experience.

  • People communicate more and more with the help of visual language, especially through photos and videos.

  • The cognitive load of mobile environments differs from the cognitive load of television.

  • The mobile experience is not uniform. Different platforms have different effects on it.

The mobile environment opens new opportunities in the creation of advertising. The number of available data has increased significantly and this has become a source of inspiration.

Different patterns of consumption push us to rethink storylines. The mobile environment is now a blank canvas. Nobody knows exactly what ideal mobile advertising looks like, and now is the time to experiment.

Written by
Vyacheslav Khmelkov

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