Before we get started, special thanks to our partners for this test – What the Fresh Hell Podcast: Laughing in the Face of Motherhood
For this test, we teamed up with Margaret an Amy, hosts of the What the Fresh Hell Podcast. In each episode they discuss a sticky bit of parenting- anything from sick days to sleep training. They talk about it, laugh about it, call out each other’s nonsense, and then we offer listeners concrete takeaways.
Testing Video Against Moving and Static Images
For this test, we wanted to see how video performs against moving images and static images. We ran two different campaigns, one was a clip about having pancakes for dinner (using landscape video), and the other was about being kicked out of band in elementary school (using square video) .
Here is a brief overview of the units in each campaign, you’ll notice that both are testing the same types of sponsored units.
Pancake Dinner Campaign (Horizontal Video)
- Video 1 – True Video: We used actual moving video for the entire output video.
- Video 2 – Moving Images: We used screen grabs of the video and added in some pan and zoom effects, to create moving images.
- Video 3 – Static Images: We used screen grabs but did not apply any pan or zoom effects.
Band Fail Campaign (Square Video)
- Video 4 – True Video: We used actual moving video for the entire output video.
- Video 5 – Moving Images: We used screen grabs of the video and added in some pan and zoom effects, to create moving images.
- Video 6 – Static Images: We used screen grabs but did not apply any pan or zoom effects.
Pancake Dinner Videos
Video 1: True Video
Video 2: Moving Images
Video 3: Static Images
Band Fail Videos
Video 4: True Video
Video 5: Moving Images
Video 5: Static Images
We put these video units into Traffic Acquisition Split tests. The units appeared as follows:
The Results
Pancake Dinner Campaign
| Type | Clicks | Impressions | CTR | CPC |
| True Video | 290 | 5191 | 5.59% | $0.11 |
| Moving Images | 251 | 4799 | 5.23% | $0.13 |
| Static Images | 256 | 4472 | 5.72% | $0.13 |
Band Fail Campaign
| Type | Clicks | Impressions | CTR | CPC |
| True Video | 410 | 5443 | 7.53% | $0.08 |
| Moving Images | 359 | 5484 | 6.55% | $0.09 |
| Static Images | 374 | 5476 | 6.83% | $0.09 |
Results: Both campaigns had similar results. While all three videos in each were somewhat close, True Video edged out the other two as the lowest cost per click in each campaign, and was declared winner by Facebook. We noticed that the difference wasn’t a total blowout, but every little bit counts when trying to stand out on Social Media.
We also noticed a strange thing with the Pancake Dinner campaign the Static Image unit had a slightly higher CTR than True Video, however, Facebook still chose the True Video unit as the winner and directed traffic accordingly. Takeaway: the next time you make an audiogram, try adding in some video clips from Headliner’s available stock footage options (or upload your own) and see if engagement improves on social. Let us know how it turns out!
What Are We Doing Here?
We’re on a mission to figure out what kinds of videos do best for promoting audio on social media, and will be using Headliner to test different variations of audiograms and see what comes out on top. As you may have seen in our previous posts, we were looking for the best way to do a proper A/B test on social media and found Facebook’s Split Testing Platform for Ads to be the easiest way to do this.
Finally, if you have a podcast and want to team up for a similar test, reach out!
