Music Videos vs. Visualizers: Which Video Type Drives More ThruPlays on FB/IG?

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Wavo Labs: This series shares the results of our music marketing experiments and how they inform artist media strategy.

What We Tested

Google studies show that ad creative is responsible for up to 70% of a campaign’s success.

That’s why Wavo regularly runs case studies that help our clients develop impactful ad creative and campaigns.

For this case study, we looked at the difference in ad performance between two pieces of artist content used to promote new releases: music video snippets and visualizers (a warping image of the artist or album cover with backing audio).

The case study included US campaigns on Facebook and Instagram with a Video Views objective designed to drive ThruPlays, a 15-second view.

The Results

Across key campaign metrics, music video creative outperformed animated visualizers:

  • Cost were less expensive: music video creative generated 25% more views per dollar

  • Music video content generated more engagement: 128% more comments, shares, and likes than animated visualizers

  • People watched music video content for longer: these creatives had an 85% longer average watch time per viewer

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The Takeaway

We recommend that music marketers prioritize music video creatives over visualizers for Facebook and Instagram campaigns.

Thinking ahead: when developing a music video, consider how it can be broken down into multiple 15-second clips that follow creative best practices for recorded music ad campaigns before the shoot.

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