Vertical Video Vs Horizontal Video: A Facebook Ads Case Study!

As you might have noticed, we recently launched the World’s first and exclusive Vertical Video Maker. This feature was introduced after understanding the needs of thousands of our business users and the hurdles they faced when it came to making videos for Social Media pages. Facebook especially has been a big challenge for marketers to conquer. And, with Facebook counting a 3 sec glance on a video as a view on promoted posts, it becomes extremely important for brands to make the best out of their FB promotion budget. Having done a lot of research in the past with how Vertical videos outperformed Horizontal videos every single time on FB, we decided to show you, the insights we gained from one of our test campaigns on FB.

The Videos Used for the Case Study

Firstly we wanted our content to be highly engaging to get the best out of the campaign. We chose the topic ‘Men Vs Women’ as it is one of the most debated topics in the world right now. We also added our own light-hearted fun to it. Check out the videos yourself.

Horizontal Version of the Video:

Vertical Version of the Video:

As you can see everything from script to design is same in the video except the format. For this particular test campaign we decided to go with a budget of $200 which was later split equally among the two promotional videos. We also made sure that the target audience we chose for both the campaigns were same. So how did the campaign perform? Did Vertical Video really outperform Horizontal Video? The results might make your jaw drop at times.

Vertical Videos have more Reach and at a lesser cost

The VV(Vertical Video) managed to reach 58% more people than HV(Horizontal videos). While the HV managed to reach 103,397, the VV reached a whopping 163,871 people! Now this is where it gets even better. The cost per 1000 impressions for Horizontal Videos was $0.85 while for Vertical Videos, it stood at a mere $0.52. This means that Horizontal Video ads (which get less exposure) is 63.5% more expensive than vertical video ads.

Vertical Videos got better Post Engagement levels

More Post Reactions(in terms of likes and other reactions) means your ad is doing well. The Vertical Video got a decent 338 reactions which is 28.5% more than what the Horizontal Video got. Now getting more shares is the ultimate sign that your target audience is really loving it! More shares mean that even the friends of your target audience will get exposed to your ad which is a BIG bonus! The Vertical Video got 231 shares compared to the Horizontal Video which received only 166. The number of shares being 39% higher is simply not ignorable by any standards.

Video completion rates were almost the same

The above metrics gives us an idea of how hooked people are to your video ad. The number of video watchers will obviously decrease at each level. However, the decrease will be immense if your video is not engaging enough. We can assume that the people who dropped off before the 25% did not find the video interesting. The number of viewers upto 25% for the Vertical Video is 22,443 and only 14,158 for Horizontal videos. This means that 58.5% more people watched the Vertical Video up to 25% completion. But this stat can be ignored as the total reach was also 59% higher for Vertical Videos as explained in point 1. Now we analyzed how the number dropped from there. For the vertical video, the number of people who viewed the whole video dwindled to 7832 from 22,443 which meant a completion rate of 34%. While for horizontal videos, the number who completed the whole video dwindled to 4362 from 14,158 which meant completion rate of 30%. This shows that though the completion rates are almost same, the vertical video slightly edged over its horizontal counterpart here as well!

Cost Effectiveness in terms of time viewed

3-second-view refers to the number of people who watched for at least 3 seconds. Now, the cost per 3-second-view is calculated by dividing the total amount spent by the number of 3-second-views. As you can see, the number cost per three-second view is same for both videos. However, when it comes to cost per 10-second-views, the HV video, stands at $0.010 which is 150% more than VV video which stands at $0.004. This also means that a lot of people dropped off the HV videos before the ten-second mark.

The bigger picture

We understand that some of you might find yourself pleasantly surprised and puzzled after looking at these results. The simple reasoning behind this difference is that the world has gone Mobile my friends! Desktops PCs and Laptops are no longer the places people go to for content consumption. With Smartphones becoming more powerful and affordable with each passing year, it doesn’t really make sense for people to buy PCs for online content consumption anymore. This also explains the immense drop in the sales of PCs, Laptops and even Tablet devices in the recent years. We are currently living through the biggest phase shift occurring in recent history. Social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn which have understood this have made their applications immensely mobile friendly so that they don’t become irrelevant. The popularity of the mobile-first social media platform Snapchat and now even Instagram TV gives more concrete evidence that this is true. From the recent post published by VentureBeat, it is clear that 92% of all daily active users on Facebook access the application through their mobile devices. Brands which are still using Horizontal videos are literally burning their money. And most of the videos which dominate in performance are vertical.

The Final Verdict

Vertical Videos have a huge advantage in Social Media especially when it comes Facebook Ads. The Vertical Video in our case study performed much better than its horizontal counterpart in terms of reach, engagement and even video completion rates. If you are scouting around for the best way to track your Facebook ad conversion, we recommend you to give a try for LOCALiQ's website grader. The icing on the cake is the fact that vertical videos give you much more value for money. As a startup, especially during the early days, we've always looked for ways to make the most of our money. You can save thousands of dollars just by optimizing your video for mobile! Did you find the insights interesting? Share it with your Social Media team to make the best out of the vertical video era!