It's cool man. I wouldn't have thought of Tracy Chapman on my own, but I can kind of see that now that you say it. It's sort of Tracy Chapmen, Jack Johnson, Jazz fusion, and a dash of Les Claypool all blended together.

I think that mixing up a bunch of targeting options actually makes a lot of sense in this case, where you are just trying to isolate a custom audience. In fact, the more the better. Only in this case specifically. Not on a normal ad. Good thinking. Otherwise the audience may be too heavily favored by the original targeting.

Brian Rogers said
Thank you for your feedback on the song man, I appreciate it! I went ahead and made a video view ad, couple ?'s

*1. should put a bunch of different targeting options in the same audience when I'm choosing the targeting for one video view ad?  I think that's what you're saying, but just clarifying.

I don't have any hard advice here because I haven't messed with mixing the audiences up all that much yet. But it makes sense to me so that you don't end up just creating a lookalike audience of your initial target audience. But yeah, to do this you would create one adset and group multiple interests into that ad set. For anyone new here, I don't normally group multiple interests. This approach is unique to this strategy. On the other hand, if you knew you had a winning audience, based on past experience, you could target that audience, knowing that you'd be refining even further based on viewer activity. So there are a couple of different ways you could approach this. 

BTW I went ahead and included Tracy Chapman, Jack Johnson, Dave Matthews, Prince EA *for the positive message appreciating crowd, which I will target more and more*, and India Arie because a couple people who don't know each other both told me that song reminded them of her... I ended up with an audience of like 5,000,000 which looking back I think is too big, but for video views I'm not sure if the criteria is different sense I bunched together a bunch of artists?

It's a bit big. May not matter for this, but it might. You might try excluding people, or narrowing things down by adding some kind of demographic info.

*2. I made a new ad from scratch when I probably should have "boosted" the existing post of the video on my page?

I don't think it matters here. I probably would have boosted just because it;s easier. But it's the views that count. Not the ad type. 

*3. Should I add a website URL, link description, learn more button and a pixel to video view ads?

I would. Drive some traffic to your squeeze page while you're at it. It will help mitigate costs of the experiment.

-BTW I left all that out because I think FB was being buggy when I tried to add the website URL because it didn't show up in the example. I was tired so I just said screw it and left all those bells and whistles out for now - There will be more chances to get it right)

Thanks John!  

Sounds good Brian. Keep us posted.

Hey Brian,

I have never run a video ad by simply boosting it. I always do it from the ad manager. You first need to create the custom audience of people who have wathced 25% of a previous video. Then you would go into your ad manager and create a new ad. But you would select video views as the objective. Then go through the usual steps of creating an ad, however when you get to the actual ad creation you select "use existing post" from the tabs. Then you can use your original post with the video in it.

I'm sure you can just boost it. But it depends a bit on your targeting options. The options are limited a bit when you do a simple boots. But if you have everything you need then no problem.

Hey John,

I personally think that the rules that apply to radio also apply to promoting yourself online. All of the variables are still the same, it's just the delivery medium that is different. Short attention spans are still short attention spans. If you wanted to use the long version for artistic reasons you could also include that in the download package and just explain the different tracks to the fan. Might make it a slightely cooler offer, and start a bit of a dialogue about your music. Just one guy's opinion.

An average view time of 1:30 is pretty great from what I've seen. But yeah, it depends on the audience. I think you're smart to go with the sorter video. Let us know how it goes.

That's a tough one. I personally like the longer one because the gradual build is more cinematic to me. But the marketer in me thinks there is a good chance the shorter one might  yield better results simply because direct and to the point usually does. What I would probably do is run some Facebook video view ads to each one (in different ad sets so they don't compete) but with the exact same ad copy and targeting and see which one gets you more clicks and a higher average view time. Then lead with that. Great job on the video.

I don't really have a specific budget that I'd recommend. I guess you could start with $5 and see what the stats look like. If there is no clear cut winner then I would maybe run them a little longer. Just make sure you have a call to action in the ad and use it like you would in your real campaign, simply because views are not the only thing that matters. Clicks are as well, and views don't necessarily correlate to actions. 

Let us know which one does better.

Awesome. Totally go for it. You have nothing to lose. You don't want to ever bombard someone or take advantage, but when the universe opens a door, it usually pays to walk through. I'd send him the link to the longer video you just sent me. You never know.

\m/

Thanks man. Yeah, I'm pretty stoked about that. Really goes to show.