Last week, our latest case study dove into Kabam’s use of video ads to promote its Marvel: Contest of Champions game. The company has had a great deal of success using the format, largely through intelligent testing that reemphasized some of the key best practices for video advertising on Facebook.

If you’re planning to start or currently running a video ad campaign, remember that with autoplay video you only have several, silent seconds to catch a user’s attention as they scroll through their feed. We’ll call this the “three-second rule.” While success in this setting seems like a tall order, the tips below reflect how many Nanigans advertisers, including Kabam, have thrived in this environment.

Don’t beat around the bush

As they say in journalism, don’t bury the lede. In order to get the best results from video you need to place the coolest, most eye-catching aspects of your product or offering right at the start of the video to draw people in.

This will help users immediately know what the ad is all about, and better pique their interest to learn more, even if they only see the video for a few seconds.

Don’t overthink it

It can be tempting to create an immersive trailer or cinematic-style video ad in order to showcase your brand. However, these ads by their nature require a good deal of attention to follow, prompting many users to keep scrolling. They can also be relatively costly to produce. Most importantly, this style may not necessarily be the best strategy for direct response advertisers seeking to drive purchases or downloads.

Several game advertisers have found that cinematic-style ads driving significantly worse results than gameplay-centric ads; this is a trend that Facebook and Nanigans have both observed across the wider industry as well.

On top of the performance boost, product-focused videos are easier for advertisers to produce, as they are inherently brand approved and can be quickly iterated against for optimization purposes.

Don’t skimp on the CTAs

As a direct response unit, video provides ample opportunities to put calls-to-action in front of users:

• In button format below the content
• Body copy that drives people toward the desired action
• Copy at the end of the video that points people toward a specific website

Prompting users to take an action in a variety of ways is a big reason why video has been so effective for a lot of advertisers.

Putting these tips into practice as you build out and test your Facebook video ad campaigns should help guide you towards optimum creative for driving direct response results.