Erik Werner, Product Explorer at ROI Hunter explains the phenomena called dynamic video and what it exactly is, and what you need to make dynamic videos and how it works. Dynamic video is a tool that allows users to create multiple videos for their Facebook advertising campaigns, automatically. It is meant to save time and lower the threshold for video creation for advertisers

You have probably heard the headlines by now -Video is the must-have content piece this year, Facebook Focuses on Video in 2016. This is of course followed up by the numbers to back these claims: “Native Facebook video engaged 4.9% of the people reached”, videos show up 360% more times in news feed than the year before. What all this drills down to is that if you are not using video on Facebook, then you might be keeping your marketing campaign from reaching its true potential.

The problem is that as much as marketers would like to overhaul their whole image library and replace it with video, the truth is that video is extremely expensive - to the tune of 2-10,000 USD per minute type of expensive. One solution is to pick campaigns that are likely to yield higher rates of return and allocate a larger portion of your budget to them. However, even with that strategy creating videos can still be resource intensive and extremely time consuming. So what’s a 21st century marketer to do?

What is Dynamic Video?

Luckily some companies have started working on a solution-dynamic video. In a nutshell, dynamic video allows you to create videos for products in your product feed at scale. You might have already heard about dynamic video but there has been confusion as to what it is exactly. So, let’s look at the first part of the term to clear any misconceptions.

Dynamic video is so named because it can change based on the information in your product feed . So, let’s say that certain items in your product feed will be sold at a lower price, for Black Friday for example. Once that information has been updated in your feed, if you use dynamic video, the price change will automatically be represented in the ads with those products automatically. This basically means that dynamic video is dynamic because the videos can automatically change based on the information you provide in your feed.

The next thing to note about this tool is that the videos that are made with dynamic video use templates so that you can apply the same theme across all of your videos.

What You Need for Dynamic Video?

So, the next point of confusion is-how does it work? In order to answer that, you’ll want to know what you need:

A complete product feed
Images or videos in your product feed
A Facebook Marketing Partner (more on that later)
You will need a product feed that includes all of the data points that you could possibly need such as, price, id, availability, description and more because when you change those data points, you don’t have to comb through individual ads to change them again.The changes happen automatically. Yay, for automation.

The next “ingredient” in our dynamic video souffle is either an image or a video. “Wait”, you might be thinking. “Why do I need a video if I’m using dynamic video?” The answer is you don’t. However, if you do happen to have video then, you will not be limited to only using images. Score one for choices.

The third thing you will need is a Facebook Marketing Partner that is working with Facebook to use dynamic video in differing capacities. Dynamic video, will be all of the rage this time next year. For now, only a very select few FMPs even have the capacity to use dynamic video now.

Now you have all you need for this wonderful souffle of automation and time-saving. How does it work exactly?

How Dynamic Video Works?

Dynamic video allows you to use multiple transitions and effects that will make your static images looks like a video . It is also possible to cut your own stock video into the product or products that you want to show. When you are creating your ads, this part will come during the ad creation phase. You can then play around with colour, text and more. After you have completed all of the necessary steps, send it to Facebook to serve as an ad.That’s it. So, what might take multiple days and even weeks to create for all of your multiple products will now take a few hours or a day.

You will find an example of the finished product. As you can see, the image of the black shoes is more or less static.This is the part that comes from your product feed. Everything else is the template. Looks cool huh? Now imagine being able to do that for your whole catalog. This is the allure of dynamic video. Make your life easier at every cost. Of course, you can make your videos as elaborate or as simple as you want.

For those marketers that have been holding off on implementing video into their campaigns because they did not have enough resources, dynamic video is the answer. It will save you time and enable you to reach your target audience with eye catching content. Come this time next year, if video is not an active part of your strategy on Facebook, then you’ll be left behind. Don’t let that happen to you.

Final Note: I know that I have been calling this dynamic video but that’s one of the ways that it’s been called. However, like I mentioned, there has been some confusion about the name. The name connotes different images for people. So, I leave it in your hands. What do you think would be a good name to call dynamic video?