Instagram Video Advertising
Advertise on Instagram with compelling video ads and Stories
Video advertising on Instagram
Instagram is one of the most popular video advertising channels in the UK. With it’s large audience and detailed targeting options, it is great for generating awareness and response for businesses of all sizes. Instagram is a highly effective channel for video advertising, whether to complement an existing TV campaign, or as a standalone channel for promoting video ads that are tailor-made for Instagram.
At a glance
- Instagram Video Advertising offers businesses of all sizes a large UK audience and is an incredibly powerful way to communicate your message and drive response
- Instagram is part of the Facebook Advertising Platform and has a wide range of targeting tools and campaign types to help you target the audience that’s right for your business
- Instagram is a mobile first platform so video Ads are different from TV ads and need to be created with mobile viewing in mind
- You can spend as much or as little as you want on Instagram Video Ads campaign
- You can buy Instagram Video Ads on a self-service basis through the Facebook Ad Platform
What are the benefits of Instagram Video Advertising?
You should consider Instagram Video Advertising for a number of reasons:
- Audience Reach and Size: when you buy Facebook Video Ads you can target a huge audience. Facebook claims to have a 90%+ reach into the UK adult market – and remember as Facebook owns Instagram you can choose to target Instagram users as well as Facebook users
- Targeting: Facebook has a wealth of data on its users. This means advertisers can create audiences within the Facebook Ad platform to target their products. For example, you can define audiences by age, gender, location and a range of interests which is based on their browsing behaviour and other factors
- Custom Audiences: you can also create ‘custom audiences’ to target. You can target people who have liked your Facebook page. If you have the correct GDPR permissions you can upload an email list to target. And you can create ‘look-a-like’ audiences, which are audiences which have similarities to your core custom audiences
- Impact and viral effect: Facebook is a busy environment, so you want your video to stand out and engage the viewer. Consider the first frame of the video and get your key messages out in the first few seconds so you get your brand in front of the viewer even if they don’t watch your video in entirety. Do this well and you may get a viral effect, where people like and share your video which effectively creates more viewers of your ad for free
- Objectives focused: Facebook offers a number of campaign types, so whether you want to raise brand awareness, or target enquiries there are campaign types you can select to target your campaign objectives
Which brands should consider Instagram Video Advertising?
Instagram Video Advertising can be very effective for a wide range of brands and businesses. We’ve already looked at the powerful targeting available to help you find your audience, but there are also a range of ‘campaign types’, enabling you to set up campaigns to target different business objectives. For example a large FMCG brand may want to create a campaign with an objective of awareness, where they simply want to reach a high volume of people; whereas a small local business may be more interested in focusing their video at a defined audience in a tightly defined location.
What types of Instagram Video Advertising packages are available?
There is a wide range of Instagram campaign types which you can buy. These are typically defined by the objectives of your advertising campaign. The first thing you do when you set up a Instagram campaign is to select the campaign objective. Here’s the range of options you see in the Ads Manager, which is a part of the Facebook Ad Platform where you can buy Instagram ads. Here is a quick run through of campaign type you can choose for you video ad campaign:
Campaign Types to Raise Awareness
If you simply want to raise awareness of your services, there are two campaign options:
- Brand Awareness – to increase people’s awareness of your business, brand or service.
- Reach – to show your ad to as many people as possible in your target audience.
Campaign Types to Raise Awareness
If your objective is to increase consideration of your services, you can encourage users to click a link on your Instagram Video Ad to connect people to your Facebook page, your website, a blog post or an app. There are five campaign types:
- Engagement – to reach people more likely to engage with your Facebook Video Ad. Engagement includes likes, comments and shares but can also include offers claimed from your Page.
- App Installs -to send people to the shop where they can download your business’s app.
- Video Views – particularly relevant to video ads, this campaign type targets your videos to people on Instagram most likely to watch it.
- Lead Generation – to collect leads for your business. Create ads that collect info from people interested in your product, such as sign-ups for newsletters.
- Messages – connect with people on Instagram, communicate with potential or existing customers to encourage interest in your business.
Conversion Campaigns
Conversion Campaigns are geared at creating leads and sales from viewers of your video ad. There are three campaign options:
- Conversions – encourage people to take a specific action on your website, such as having them to add items to a cart, download your app, register for your site, or make a purchase.
- Catalogue Sales – which shows products from your e-commerce store’s catalogue to generate sales.
- Store Traffic – to promote your brick-and-mortar business locations to people that are nearby.
As you can see there are a lot of points to consider when running a Facebook Video Ad campaign.
What types of creative work for Instagram Video Ads
There is an art in creating good Instagram Video Ads. Instagram is primarily a mobile experience and completely different viewing environment to linear TV so create ads for Instagram specifically. Check out this research on video ad viewing habits:
Source: Facebook
So here are our five top tips for creating your killer Instagram Video Ad:
- Grab attention quickly – Instagram Ads are viewed on mobile devices; so your video needs to be ‘thumb stopping’ – focus on the the first few seconds to arrest the scrolling viewers’ interests
- Keep it simple – don’t over complicate your ad. Be very clear and single-minded in what you want to communicate. Don’t have too many words on the ad.
- Keep it short – attention spans are limited, so keep your video ad between 5 and 15 seconds – so get your brand out there early in the ad
- Copy – you can add a title and short copy description next to your video ad. Make this as compelling and benefit-driven as possible to encourage the user to view the ad
- Sound – around 85% of Video Ads will autoplay with sound off, with users electing to turn sound on. So make sure visuals, subtitles or text on screen conveys the critical messages.
Instagram Video Ad formats and guidelines
Getting formats right for Instagram Video Ads is also critical to campaign success. Most TV ads are created in 16:9 widescreen format, but remember most Instagram Video Ads are viewed on mobile phones in Feeds and Stories. Here are some points to consider:
- Video Ads – Feed and Stories — Minimum width – 500 pixels. Minimum aspect ratio – 400×500. Maximum aspect ratio – 191×100. Maximum file size – 30MB. Maximum duration – 2 minutes.
Source: Facebook
How much does Instagram Video Advertising cost?
There is no single answer to that question unfortunately. But your Instagram Video Advertising will have three components: video creation, media cost, and campaign management:
Instagram video ad creation costs
There are so many approaches to this. You can re-edit or adapt existing video content, or you can create a new video ad. You can try to do it yourself, or you can go to a specialist agency. And you can even experiment with video ad creation platforms like Animoto and Promo. For a basic video ad, edited from pre-existing assets we’d estimate a £1k to £5k cost – and higher if you were creating something from scratch.
Instagram video ad media campaign costs
The good news is that there is no minimum entry point to Instagram Video Advertising; you can set a budget you are comfortable with, and take it from there – so if you wanted to spend say £10 a day, no problem. However as we saw above there is a wide range of campaign types available to target your Instagram Video Ad. Each campaign type will have a different cost base, usually calculated in CPM – or cost per thousand ad impressions. The pricing by campaign type varies massively – but typically Awareness campaigns are less than £2 CPM, Consideration campaigns between £2 and £6 CPM and Conversion campaigns £6+ – and can be considerably higher.
Campaign management and set up costs
Instagram and Facebook run off the same ad platform which can be difficult for the uninitiated. So you will need to either develop Instagram campaign management knowledge quickly (no doubt making mistakes along the way) or hire a specialist or a specialist agency. Either way, it takes time. So costs may vary based on how much set up is required and the size and scope of the campaign. There will be a minimum fee, no doubt based on a specialists day rate; and then you should budget 10% to 15% of total ad spend to manage your campaign. These fees should really pay for themselves in getting your spending and results optimised and delivering. Our Facebook and Instagram specialists can give you a quick estimate if required.
How can I buy Instagram Video Advertising in the UK?
You can buy Instagram Video Advertising either yourself, directly in the Facebook Platform or via a specialist advertising agency.
If you are buying yourself, you will need a Facebook and an Instagram page for your business. You can then open a free Business Manager account and from there create an Ad Campaign. You will also need to add a Facebook Pixel to your website, so that Facebook can build reports and track the success of your campaign. As discussed above it can be a little daunting, so make sure you read the Facebook Business set up section of their website before you start.
Alternatively, do contact a specialist agency. They can help navigate set up and will be able to create Instagram Video Ads and Story Ads (and non-video ads), and create campaigns which are optimised using the full suite of tools available. If you want to discuss Instagram Video advertising, please call us on 0800 133 7104 or contact us and we’ll get right back to you.
