How a single video ad works
The unit is one video file, the primary text, a headline and a button pointing at a single destination. Meta serves it across surfaces that look nothing alike: a full-screen vertical slot where it fills the phone, an in-feed unit where it plays in a smaller frame while the page scrolls, and video slots inside other people’s content.
Two behaviours shape everything else. Most feed views begin without sound, so anything explained only by a voice is lost unless it is captioned or shown. And the viewer decides whether to keep watching almost immediately, which is why reporting separates the people who saw the opening from the people who watched a meaningful stretch. Optimisation choices such as ThruPlay exist precisely because a play is not the same as attention.
Why single video ads matter
Video is the format that can demonstrate. A service that is hard to describe in a sentence — a treatment, a trek, a piece of software, a renovation — becomes obvious when someone watches it happen. It also carries a human face, which is often what earns trust from an audience that has never heard of you.
The cost is production and speed. A video takes longer to make and longer to change than an image, so a campaign that leans on video alone learns slowly. In markets like Nepal, where connections vary and data is metered, a long video also asks more of the viewer than many are willing to give, particularly outside the main cities.
Where single video ads go wrong
The most expensive mistake is a slow start. Logos, title cards and a wide establishing shot spend the only seconds you were reliably given, and the ad is skipped before it reaches the point.
Next comes sound dependence: an unsubtitled voiceover in a silent feed communicates nothing. Then shape — a horizontal edit dropped into full-screen surfaces leaves bars or crops faces, which reads as an advert rather than as content. Finally, advertisers judge video by views. Views are cheap to buy and easy to feel good about; results are what pay for the shoot.
What to do about it
Open on the subject. Show the product, the problem or the person in the first moment, and let branding arrive once attention is held. Burn captions in rather than relying on automatic ones, keep the edit as short as the message allows, and cut a vertical version for full-screen slots instead of trimming a wide one.
Read the video metrics as a diagnosis, not a scoreboard: a weak hook rate means the opening failed, while a healthy hook with poor completion means the middle did. ThruPlay reporting separates the two. Test the message cheaply with still images first, then put the money into filming the version that already works. What that looks like in practice is set out on my Meta video ads page.