Solved: Photos vs Videos, What Matters for Facebook Ads?

Hi there,

Thanks for reaching out! Happy to give you some of my thoughts on your questions about using photos vs. videos in your Facebook ads. It's a common question, and honestly, the answer isn't as simple as one being 'better' than the other. It really comes down to testing and understanding what your audience responds to, which depends on what you're selling and who you're selling it to.

I'll walk you through how I'd approach this, from the high-level strategy right down to the nitty-gritty of placements. The real win isn't in picking the 'right' format, but in building a system to find out what actually works for your business.

The Real Question: It's Not Format, It's Context and Message

First things first, let's bust a common myth. Asking "should I use photos or videos?" is a bit like asking "should I use a hammer or a screwdriver?". The answer is, it depends what you're trying to build. Both can be incredibly effective, and both can be a complete waste of money. I've seen simple, almost ugly, image ads outperform slick, expensive video productions, and vice-versa. One campaign we ran for a B2B software client got an incredible 4,622 registrations using simple image ads on Meta because the message was spot on.

The success of an ad is almost never down to the format alone. It's a combination of three things: the Offer (what you're selling), the Audience (who you're selling it to), and the Creative (the message and how you present it). A weak offer presented in a beautiful video will still be a weak offer. A powerful message in a simple image ad can be hugely succesful.

Your job isn't to guess which format is magically superior. Your job is to find the right message for your audience and deliver it in the format they're most likely to respond to, depending on where they are in their buying journey. You need to become an expert in their problems, their specific, urgent, expensive nightmare. Your creative needs to speak directly to that pain.

For example, you don't sell "accounting software"; you sell "the relief of a perfect audit and never worrying about a tax deadline again." An image might capture that feeling of relief, while a video could demonstrate the exact feature that makes it possible. They serve different purposes for different people at different times.

We'll need to look at a structured testing framework

So, instead of picking one format and hoping for the best, you need to test them against each other systematically. This is the only way to get a real answer for your business. Relying on "best practices" is a recipe for mediocore results.

Here’s a simple but effective way to structure your tests:

1. One Campaign, Multiple Ad Sets: Start with a single campaign with a clear objective (e.g., Conversions > Purchases). Inside that campaign, create seperate ad sets for each audience you want to test. For example, one ad set for a lookalike audience, one for a broad interest-based audience, and one for retargeting.

2. Test Creatives Inside Each Ad Set: Inside each ad set, this is where you run your creative tests. Start with at least 3-5 different ads. This should be a mix of formats. For example:
-> Ad 1: A strong static image with a punchy headline.
-> Ad 2: Another static image, but with a different angle or visual style.
-> Ad 3: A short video (under 30 seconds) demonstrating the product or a key benefit.
-> Ad 4: A carousel ad showing off multiple products or features.

3. Isolate Your Variables: When you're starting out, try to test one big idea at a time. If you're testing images vs. video, keep the headline and core message as similar as possible across the ads. This helps you understand if it's truly the format that's making the difference. Once you have a winning format, you can then start testing different messages within that format.

4. Judge by the Right Metrics: Don't get fooled by vanity metrics like Click-Through Rate (CTR) or cost per click (CPC). A video might get a lower CTR than an image but result in a much higher conversion rate and a lower cost per purchase, because the people who do click are much more qualified. The only metric that truly matters is your Cost Per Result (whatever your 'result' is – a sale, a lead, etc.) and your Return On Ad Spend (ROAS). I'd rather have a £5 cost per lead from a video than a £2 cost per lead from an image if the video leads convert into customers at three times the rate.

I'd say you need to master the message before the medium

Let's be brutally honest. A £10,000 video shoot won't save a bad message. But a killer message scrawled on a napkin and photographed with an old phone can work wonders (though I wouldn't recommend that!). Before you spend a penny on production, you need to nail your copy.

Think about the emotional journey of your customer. What's their world like before your product, and what could it be like after? Your ad is the bridge between those two states. We use this "Before-After-Bridge" framework all the time for SaaS clients, and it works incredibly well. One of our clients was struggling to sell a medical job matching platform, with CPAs around £100. By shifting the message to focus on the 'after' state—the relief and confidence of finding the perfect job—we helped them reduce that CPA to just £7.

Here’s what that looks like in practice:

See the difference? The 'Before' is all about them. The 'After' is all about the customer and their nightmare. Get this message right first, and then you can start thinking about whether an image or video will deliver it best.

You probably should think about creative fatigue

Another reason to have a mix of images and videos ready is something called 'creative fatigue'. This happens when your audience has seen your ad so many times they start to ignore it. Performance drops, costs go up, and your campaign dies a slow death. This is why you can't just find one "winner" and ride it into the sunset.

Having a library of tested creatives—both photos and videos—allows you to quickly swap them out when you see performance start to dip. A simple image ad might work great for two weeks, but then you'll need to swap in a video or a carousel to keep things fresh. Advertising isn't a 'set it and forget it' game; it's about constant iteration and optimisation.

How quickly your ads fatigue depends on your daily budget and the size of your audience. If you're spending a lot of money on a small audience, you'll need to refresh your creative much more often, maybe even weekly. If you have a smaller budget and a large audience, your ads might last a month or more. It's something you have to monitor.

You'll need to answer your own questions

Now, let’s tackle your other two questions directly based on everything we've discussed.

1. "Should I make a video out of my image ads?"

Yes, you absolutely should test this. It's a low-cost, low-effort way to create a 'video' asset. You can use simple tools (even Facebook's own creator studio has options) to turn a series of images into a slideshow video. You can add text overlays to highlight key benefits and a bit of music. These simple animated videos can work surprisingly well, especially for retargeting audiences who are already familiar with your brand. It's another creative variation to throw into your tests. Don't expect it to compete with a well-shot, live-action video, but it can often beat a static image, so it's definately worth trying.

2. "Should I let Facebook size my image/video for placements?"

My straightforward advice here is: No. Never. While letting Facebook's "Advantage+ Placements" automatically crop your assets is easy, it's also lazy and often produces poor results. An image designed for the 1:1 square format of the Facebook feed will look terrible when it's automatically cropped to the 9:16 vertical format for a Story or Reel. Important text might get cut off, your product might be off-centre, and it just screams "this is an ad that wasn't made for me".

You will almost always get better performance by creating unique creative assets for your most important placements. As a bare minimum, you should have:
-> Square (1:1 ratio): For Facebook and Instagram Feeds.
-> Vertical (9:16 ratio): For Stories and Reels.

This shows you respect the platform and the user's experience, which generally leads to better engagement and lower costs. It takes a bit more effort upfront, but it pays off.

This is the main advice I have for you:

To wrap this up, the path to finding what works isn't about picking a side in the "image vs. video" debate. It's about building a robust process of testing and learning. Here are the actionable steps I'd recommend you take.

As you can probably tell, doing this properly involves a lot more than just uploading a photo and setting a budget. It's a continuous cycle of strategic thinking, creative development, testing, and analysis. It takes time, expertise, and a very disciplined approach to acheive the best results.

If you'd like to chat through your specific business goals and have us take a look at your current strategy, we offer a completely free, no-obligation initial consultation. We could dive into your account and give you some concrete feedback on how to implement a testing framework like this one.

Hope that helps!

Regards,

Team @ Lukas Holschuh