“Stop the Scroll” – Quickly Turn Images Into Video On Facebook & Instagram

Facebook Video User Studies

Andrew Kelly, Global Creative director at Facebook, said that the average person scrolls through 300 feet of mobile content every day. That is equivalent to the height of the Statue of Liberty. You may have already noticed that scrolling on mobile phones has replaced the click. Even with websites the trend has been to design them to be scrollable so that they are more mobile friendly

Because of this behavior Facebook has been pushing “mobile first video”. Facebook studies conducted by Facebook IQ show that users gazed at video content 5 times longer on Facebook and Instagram . This study is one of the main reasons Facebook is pushing for advertisers to include mobile first video in their marketing strategy. It is getting more difficult to get the attention of your audience on social media platforms.

“Stopping The Scroll”

The phrase “stop the scroll” has become a popular term to describe strategies for getting users of social media platforms like Facebook & Instagram to stop scrolling on their phones and pay attention to your posts and/or your ad campaigns. Stopping the scroll isn’t necessarily accomplished by using short video — but it can help. You also have to have interesting creative and ad copy that speaks to your audience.

Facebook Video Templates

To create short video ads from static image ads Facebook has introduced new tools to make creating videos much easier. Using a static image we can now create a simple video using the Facebook ads platform and edit the video frames.

To create a video from a static image in Facebook ads manager you can do the following:

Go to Ads Manager
Click +Create
Choose an objective that supports video and then click Continue
Choose your targeting, placements and budget and then click Continue.
In the Formats section, click Single Image or Video
Event Marketing
Traditional (Print)

Then you can click on Video/Slideshow and then Use Templates.

Facebook has provided a variety of templates that allow you to customize each scene:

Background: Choose a main image that serves as the background for the scene.
Logo: Add a logo or similar small image that represents your business to the video. You can adjust the size of the logo to Small, Medium or Large, and change the position of the logo.
Text overlay: Add text to the scene (up to 30 characters). Select a font, text color and background color, and change the position of the text overlay.

Here is an example video that was created from using an image and Facebook’s new video templates:

Summary

We have found that a combination of static and video ads produces the best results when the end goal is conversions. Video ads help to capture the user’s attention and static ads are more “clickable” and tend to push users to a conversion action. The goal of the ad campaign should drive the choice of creative assets.

For general branding and awareness we can create a short video using static images to help capture the attention of users. However, what the images and video communicate are just as important as the video. In order to capture the attention of mobile users you have to think creatively if you are going to build an interested audience.

Sean periodically teaches as an adjunct professor on the topic of search engines and search marketing at MSU and is a member of their computer science advisory board. He completed coursework for his PhD in machine learning at MSU. He was the founder and publisher of SEMJ.org. Sean holds four engineering patents, has a B.S. in physics from the University of Washington in Seattle, and a master’s in electrical engineering from Washington State University. As president and director at metric ppc, Inc. he focuses on search marketing, internet research, and consults for large companies.