As additional businesses start to dabble in social media, it’s becoming more elusive to capture audience attention. Enter the rise of native video. Video offers a highly engaging and easy to consume medium that works on both desktop and mobile devices alike. It’s become so popular for social networks that according to comScore , Facebook is poised to dethrone the behemoth, YouTube, as the top site for desktop video views just months after its release.

Capitalizing on this trend, Facebook and Twitter have unveiled catered options for advertisers to promote their video content to highly refined audiences. In this post, I’ll reveal the best suite of complimentary settings to generate targeted video views.

Create a Video Promotion Campaign

First, you will be prompted to choose a campaign objective type. Each network provides several options to select from, and it’s important to choose the campaign type that’s best suited for your end goal.

If you’re advertising on Facebook, choose a Video Views Campaign . For those who want to reach Twitter users, select a Tweet Engagement Campaign .

Tip: For Twitter, it’s best to create the Tweet, including the video creative, before starting campaign creation.

Build Your Creative

You don’t necessarily need a fancy studio or expensive equipment to produce a captivating video. Ensure your video is short (ideally 30 seconds or less), contains crisp imagery, and tells a visual story. Once you feel confident about the creative, it’s time to upload it.

1. Upload your video.

• In Twitter: Add it to the videos section in Twitter, create your tweet, then assign it to a campaign.

• In Facebook: Upload your video right within ad creation.

2. Add a clean cover image (FB only).

3. Craft intriguing body copy.

4. Include a compelling call-to-action button.

• Add a destination click-through link (FB only)

Target Your Audience

Once your creative is set, it’s time to start thinking about how to promote the video to your ideal audience. Outside of basic demographic settings, each network offers a wealth of deeper targeting options to fine tune who will see your video.

Learn more about targeting in our guides to Facebook and Twitter Ads .

Optimize to KPIs

The end goal for a video campaign is to generate the most amount of views and engagement at the lowest cost. Below are key metrics you should focus on to generate the best results.

To improve the performance of your ads, you have many options in your tool belt:

Refine your audience

• Double down on what’s working, and pause audiences with high cost engagement rates.

Upload new creative

• Your creative, if seen too frequently, can become stale to your audience; and costs will rise, while click-throughs drop.

Break out desktop vs. mobile device placements

• Understand which device type is generating the best return.

Inflate or deflate your max bids

• Increase bids for greater reach
• Decrease bids for high costs, or to control spend pacing.

Retarget viewers of previous videos (FB only)

Bringing it Home

Facebook and Twitter’s video capabilities offer a powerful new opportunity for savvy marketers to deliver their message in an engaging way. The videos live right within the native environment (mobile users hate being redirected) and can be played with a simple mouseover or single click. Couple your creative with each networks’ expansive targeting to generate high engagement rates at low overall costs, racking up the view counts on your videos.