New Panoramic Videos capture user attention and boost advertiser results

Juris Leznins, Head Of Marketing at E-Global Trade & Finance Group, Inc.:

“We, as an open-minded broker, are always looking for opportunities to increase the effectiveness of our marketing campaigns. With this particular campaign we wanted to see if 360 video ad will be more attractive compared to the simple video ad.”

Forex4you operates worldwide, but this campaign focused on Thailand.

As a demonstration of the effectiveness of 360 Video, Aitarget and Forex4you ran a A/B test campaign for a fortnight, with two types of ad sets both focused on the same broad audience of 25-50 year old male Android users in Thailand. The first ad set included a standard (non-interactive) video with app demonstration. For the second, 360 Video was utilised.

The A/B test for the first two weeks of the ad sets impression showed that panoramic video cut the cost per new user registration by 20%. Use of 360 Video not only made the company stand out in a crowded market, it significantly improved core metrics.

An example of dynamic advertising for banks and financial technologies

The settings for the ads are flexible: you could set the time of updating for the exchange’s opening and closing hours, or choose a more appropriate time.

Prompt price notifications are the hook here for new traders and those who’ve already used your brokerage platform to take deep target actions (e.g. add funds to their account).

Better together

Given that conversions for banks and fintech companies are related to requests and registrations, we recommend that you combine the power of Dynamic Ads and Lead Ads.

With this combination of social media tools, after a user has interacted with a dynamic video or Carousel ad, they will be driven to a lead form where they can easily leave their contact details, without having to switch from Facebook to a third-party website.

An example of combining Dynamic Ads for fintech and a lead form

Our experience shows that conversions for the Facebook lead form are higher than those for lead forms on an external website, since the user doesn’t have to fill in as many gaps themselves. There is very little they have to do manually: their required name, email, and phone number can be automatically entered from their Facebook profile.

For banks and fintech companies who wish to collect other relevant information (e.g. customer payment information), you’ll need further permission to process such personal data. You can use Lead Ads that drive traders to your website to give additional data.

Setting things up in this way can help increase the quality of leads for banks and fintech companies. Combining Dynamic Ads with Lead Ads means that traders who complete both actions (filling in a lead form in the ad itself then heading to your website) are more likely to be highly engaged and wish to continue dealing with your platform.

How Aitarget’s innovative tools saw a trading app hyperpersonalise its videos to great effect

As the great Maya Angelou once said, “If you don’t know where you’ve come from, you don’t know where you’re going”. So first, let’s dig into some history.

Back in 2016, we at Aitarget spotted two emerging trends in terms of Facebook advertising: personalisation and video. So we created a video tool that allows our clients to mass-produce video ads based on a template, that get tuned to various targeting settings.

Thus, the velocity and scale with which we displayed the latest market data in ads contributed a great deal in the campaign’s success.

Max Morokko, Marketing Tech Lead at Capital.com:

‘As a partner Aitarget goes far beyond just providing an interface to manage and automate your ads; nowadays all Facebook Marketing Partners do so and at the same time advanced clients build their own automations. Aitarget helped us translate into action dynamic templated videos based on information from a live volatility feed. Against a background of overall stagnation in vertical in general, dynamic videos generated greater than 200% of ROAS in the very first month.”

Our experts have analysed Facebook advertising for trading companies and uncovered how advertising budgets can be easily blown, wasted, or spent inefficiently.How do you prevent that happening? We invite you to take our quiz to evaluate your fintech marketing skills and learn more about the specifics of Facebook Ads for financial technologies.

How do I play?

For each question, click or tap on your chosen answer/s (there may be more than one correct answer). Hit ‘Next’ after you’re satisfied with your choices.

You will need to make one extra step at the end to find out your results and get all answer keys.

What are you waiting for? Dive in…

The second half of our how-to guide for fintech companies to improve their online creatives and outperform the competition

Choose your words wisely

Don’t overlook the power of words. You should use text only in special slots (title, body, call-to-action).

It’s not the best idea to combine text with an image, except when the text is part of your product. Using too much text can worsen the perception of a creative, so restrict yourself to captions or names for your metrics; don’t put in detail on the images explaining your product’s benefits.

Use Facebook Image Text Check to confirm how well any text is placed in your creative. This tool evaluates the chances of an image to pass moderation and reach its target audience.

Love at first sight

First impressions don’t only matter in social media advertising, they’re everything.

In 2014, neuroscientists discovered the brain processes visual information in 13 milliseconds. That’s how much time you have to make contact with a potential client. That’s why ads should be very clear on first sight. Visuals should be striking, text concise.

Dynamic formats

Aitarget’s experience shows that fintech companies mainly use static images in their ads.

We strongly recommend you consider videos and dynamic ad formats, which greatly increase users’ desire to interact with your ad and product.

Using Facebook Video Creation Kit, you can easily build simple video with slideshows, adding movement and interest to your ads. Go even deeper with Carousel in Instagram Stories, which allow you to use up to 10 horizontal cards in one ad.

Immerse the audience in your product. You could use the panoramic effect of 360 Video or Playable Ads. It allows potential customers to test your app before installing it.

Who are you?

Whatever your campaign goal is, your ads should encourage a direct response from potential customers (e.g. conversions) as well as increasing your overall brand awareness.

To do this, always mention your brand and show your product. The balance between these elements may vary in accordance to your place in the market, how well the audience already knows you, and whether you’re looking for conversions or focused on brand awareness.

Given the brain only needs 13 milliseconds to process visual information, you can get the audience to see you and remember you with a quick flash of your branding.

In a short video targeted at direct responses, show all elements according to a simple scheme: the essence of your product, its main advantage, your brand.

What counts?

Numbers are vital for fintech companies and their clients. So grab audience attention by showing the most relevant and important numbers (e.g. deposit size, transaction speed, rates) using a larger font. Use smaller fonts for explanations, the tiniest for any required license data.

Don’t bank on it

While photo banks can be convenient resources, we don’t recommend you search for creatives there. Everybody uses stock photos, and even if you find an image you really like, there’s a high chance it’s already been used by another advertiser.

Stock photos also tend to be generic, using simplified concepts that don’t tie to or boost your business. For example, a potential trader who sees an arm drawing a graph won’t grasp to which part of your company the ad is related to or anything about the product you offer.

However, stock images can be appropriate if you customise them with your product and brand.

To sum up our guidance, we offer a checklist so you can assess your creatives. Check out your ads – how many points will you get?

Aitarget’s how-to guide for fintech companies to improve their online creatives, address weaknesses, and outperform the competition.

An abridged version of the article was first published in Business 2 Community.

One Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Mississippi. Three seconds.

According to Facebook’s own data, that’s more time than the average social media user spends interacting with a piece of content. Scrolling through their News Feed, people spend on average only 2.5 seconds with a piece of content when on their desktop, and just 1.7 seconds on mobile.

Time is precious, our environment is fast-paced, and you have to quickly capture your potential audience’s attention. It’s vital that you interest the audience and encourage them to quickly make targeted actions on your website or app. Every moment of a video ad can drive value.

While you can find potential clients using correctly set targeting and optimisations, often you can only attract their attention with the appearance of your ads, the visual impact of your creatives.

So how can fintech companies use their creatives to entice users? Aitarget’s team of fintech advertising specialists ran an analysis of brokers’ creatives and summarised dos and donts. Here is what most often prevent advertisers from gaining conversions.

To increase your ads’ chances to attract an audience, we’ve created this two-part guide with tips on creatives and examples of successful solutions and choices to avoid.

Use the three keys

From the start, check that you are using the three main advertising keys when it comes to gathering demo requests and website registrations: benefit, diversity, and persuasiveness.

Benefit

First of all, explain the way in which your product is beneficial. This is the first lever: attract users’ attention to what it is you offer that can help them deal with their issues.

It is best to demonstrate specific opportunities and benefits, rather than saying something abstract or too general that won’t catch your audience’s attention or stand out as a solution.

• Bad: We are the best international broker.
• Better:We explain how to work with forex platforms to achieve revenue growth up to 200% a year.

Diversity

Second, change your creatives regularly. Sticking with a video that once brought good results and just showing it many times over will cause banner blindness. Users will start ignoring ads which they repeatedly see or have gotten too used to.

The solution is to update your creatives constantly. Base your creatives on successful principles, but experiment a little too and try to avoid repetition or too much similarity.

Where would you get enough ideas to provide a range of different creative? A hot tip: don’t try to show all the advantages of your products, technology, or additional services in a single ad. Instead, share details about various aspects of the benefits you provide across several ads. You can demonstrate each of the advantages in more detail and target audiences more specifically.

Keep in mind that Facebook monitors the frequency of ad impressions from the same advertiser. This means that depending on ad placement, a user will see your ads no more than once each three to 12 hours.

• Bad: A long video describing in detail 15 advantages of your platform. You invested a lot in production and the video is like a short movie about your company.
• Better:15 different creatives demonstrating the benefits of your product from various angles. Launch A/B tests to monitor which of them your audience perceives the best.

Following these three main advertising keys above (benefit, diversity, visual persuasiveness) will improve your creatives regardless of your vertical, and likely lead to better results.

In the forthcoming part 2 of this feature we’ll share further practical tips for fintech companies looking to improve their Facebook ads and drive higher conversions, including the correct use of text, dynamic formats, brand awareness, and the best way to use numbers in your creatives.

Aitarget’s step-by-step advertising guide for fintech companies

Success in Facebook advertising is built on four pillars: 1) bid, 2) targeting, 3) funnel, and 4) creative. Their importance as foundations for good advertising is comparable to the importance of bidding strategies on the stock exchange.

To keep these pillars stable and your Facebook ads from wasting your budget, we’ve created this step-by-step guide to building a firm ad foundation for fintech companies.

It starts with a Pixel (or SDK)

As the figure above shows, even when businesses have installed a Facebook Pixel, there can still be issues with how it is used which will affect your advertising success.

Having gathered such data on users’ behaviour on your website, you can then target ads towards those who have already shown interest and are more likely to become your clients. Using Pixel data you can also create Lookalike audiences, which allow you to target new users who are similar to your current visitors by behaviour and interests.

You can also use Facebook SDK to collect data on mobile app users. It works the same way as Pixel does for websites, collecting statistics on the actions of potential clients.

Consider what road signs you should use on this pathway, so that you can narrow down the funnel for as many people as possible. The journey can begin and shorten at any of its points, e.g. when a user opens an actual account without using a demo version.

The more steps potential clients have to take, the more chances you lose them.

Let new clients get to the finish (the desired action) with the smoothest possible route. For instance, combine a website visit and sign up with the Lead Ads format, so users will share contacts or start an account directly in the ad.

Diversify your portfolio

Traders understand the power of diversification, and the same holds true with online advertising. Try different formats. We have learnt from working with fintech companies that Lead Ads, as well as Instant Experience (former Canvas), attract traders the best.

Lead Ads

When set up correctly, this format lowers the cost of a targeted action. Someone interested in your product fills in a Lead Form, and you will use that data for further contact.

Source: Facebook

Instant Experience

This full-screen ad for mobile devices, or a mini landing, consists of images, videos, slideshows, a Carousel or Collection.

You can demonstrate a range of products and services and allow users to familiarise themselves with your offerings without leaving the social network.

 

 

Source: Facebook

 

Get moving

We recommend using videos instead of static images in your advertising. From our experience, a video performs better than even the most successful and creative image.

For trading, 360° is one of the most effective advertising video formats. In these volumetric panoramic videos viewers can easily change the angle with a mouse or by tilting a smartphone. Financial service companies rarely use such videos, so by using the format you will immediately stand out and attract attention.

 

Aitarget’s 360° Video for ForexClub

Be dynamic

We recommend using dynamic constituents in your ads. To enhance personalisation and user engagement, we propose auto-updating of information in your ads. For instance, display actual stock buying-selling prices, their changes, and currency pairs.

Use a product feed with automatically refreshing data, e.g. in a video with a graph of share prices the curve changes direction automatically in accordance with the actual share prices. Such feeds are available for static images in Carousels and Instant Experiences or for a Single Video.

Through Pixel and other technologies, Facebook learns to show your ads to the users who are most likely to take a particular action, through optimisation of this action. The target action for your ad isn’t always a click. Optimise your ad campaign to the index that is most important to your results, because this will help you lower the costs.

Place your bids mindfully

A bid defines the price you pay for showing your ad. It is constantly changing from auction to auction, so the price for the impression off the same ad will fluctuate.When you set up a bid, pay attention to its two types. You can either put your faith in Facebook’s targeted action cost optimisation or set the bid yourself.

In the first case, Facebook’s algorithm will seek the lowest price for a targeted action. This strategy can lead to cost fluctuation with respect to growing competition at the auction. The bid may unexpectedly rise.

Should you wish to regulate the price of each conversion, the manual bid is your choice. You will get more predictable costs on targeted actions, and the bid will never go higher than the level set by you.

Tidy up! Keep your ad account neat

How FBS doubled conversions with Carousel in Instagram Stories

A new ad format + Aitarget’s expertise = double the success. It was a great equation and a staggering result for FBS, an international award-winning Forex broker that operates in almost 200 countries, with seven million traders and 130,000 partners.

Teaming up with Aitarget, FBS was one of the first businesses to take advantage of Carousel in Instagram Stories, a decision that doubled its conversions with no increase in its budget.

Instagram released Carousel in Stories in February. As a partner, we at Aitarget got early access and we were able to help our clients quickly launch highly interactive 3-in-1 ads.

The Carousel format allows businesses to make their Stories ads native and interactive. Brands can use up to three pieces of media (image or video) to tell an engaging story and capture audience attention. It’s a creative format that delivers clear business results.

Aitarget recommends taking advantage of the video capabilities of the Carousel format.

Video is the most memorable way for brands to connect with an audience; people remember 95% of a message told through video, compared to only 10% from text. Over half of video content is consumed on mobile, and vertical video on Instagram is taking the spotlight for how brands can communicate with their audience.

Case Study: FBS breaks new ground

FBS worked with Aitarget to start a brand awareness campaign with the aim of converting website traffic to registered website users with minimal CPA.

FBS customised a branded video story specifically for the Carousel in Instagram Stories format. Their Story communicated a simple message of who they are.

Evgeniya Hozhajlova, Senior Marketing Manager of FBS, says:

“Facebook is one of the biggest advertising channels for our company and it’s always a pleasure to test new features, marketing tools, and ad formats. We are also glad to cooperate with Facebook Marketing partners such as Aitarget and increase results together. Thank you everyone for a great job!”

Based on Aitarget’s experience with Instagram Stories, we’ve distilled some key points from our various clients’ successful Carousel in Stories campaigns.

• Content must be relevant, make sure you grab the attention of the audience;
• The video option allows advertisers to display not just one, but three 0-15 second videos – so it’s important to include multiple scenes and some mystery;
• Instagram Stories ads that take longer to reveal the key message tend to be more successful (Facebook IQ).

Therefore, the best strategy for Carousel in Instagram Stories is to use a teaser format in the first and second stories to give off a sense of mystery and reveal the brand in the third one to complete the whole story.

The FBS campaign is a great example. Here is what their video Story looked like:

Looks good, but what about the results?

After a week, CPA dropped 28% in comparison to all placements, and 33% in comparison to conversions from Instagram Stories. Overall, the FBS campaign doubled the number of conversions from Instagram Stories, while the budget remained the same.