Our Reach & Retarget feature allows you to connect your Facebook Ads Account to Wistia. With Wistia stats in Facebook, you’ll have the power to “retarget” ads on Facebook based on media engagement.
Setting up the Wistia - Facebook Ads Integration
Wistia and Facebook Ads are a match made in marketing heaven. Here’s our step-by-step guide to getting the Integration working for you.
Note
Before you get started you’ll need to be an Account Owner in Wistia, and on a plan with the Facebook Promotion Integration enabled.
Let’s start with a brief overview. Here are the 3 key steps to getting fully integrated:
Connect to Facebook Ads. This will allow you to connect your Facebook Ads platform accounts to Wistia in order to empower those platforms with audience data.
Accept Permissions. When connected, this will grant Wistia permission to manage your ads account.
Confirm Connection. Confirm that we’ve connected to and are using the correct Pixel and ads account.
Connect to Facebook Ads
First we need to connect to Facebook Ads. To do so, navigate to the integration page within your Account and select the Facebook Ads integration. This integration will be listed under the “Reach & Retarget Integrations” section of the page.
Connect to the integration by clicking “Connect” and log into your Facebook account.
Note
Be sure to log in to the Facebook account that manages your Ad Platforms.
Accept Permissions
Once you have connected to Facebook, you will be prompted to accept the permissions that Wistia will request from Facebook. For the Facebook Ads integration, we will be requesting the ability to manage ads.
Tip
How will you know if your connection is successful? After accepting the requested permissions, you will have completed the integration flow and be redirected back to the Integrations page in Wistia. You should then see Facebook Ads marked as “Connected.”
Choosing Ad Managers and Ad Pixels
Within your Wistia Integration Page, expand your Facebook Ads Integration. You should see the name of the Ad Manager and the Ad Pixel which you are connected to. If you have multiple accounts associated with your Facebook login, you can select the Ad Account Manager and/or Pixel that you would like to be integrated with from their respective dropdown menus.
Using Viewer and Listener Event Data to inform your Custom Audience
When someone watches or listens to an embedded Wistia media or channel, we send the following events to Facebook:
% Played
25% Played
50% Played
75% Played
100% Played
Seconds Played
Played
Subscribed
Note
The Subscribed event is only applicable to Channels.
Each of these events also includes additional metadata that can be used to “refine” audience rules in Facebook’s Audience creation tool. We include the following metadata about each of the events we send:
channel_id: The 10 character string at the end of each Channel URL which is a unique identifier for each channel.
channel_name: Text reflecting the name of the channel.
media_id: The 10 character string at the end of each media URL which is a unique identifier for each media.
media_name: Text reflecting the name of the media.
seconds_played: The number of seconds that a user has played a media.
Adding a Suggested Audience to your Channel
First, ensure you are viewing a Channel and choose the Promote page from the left hand navigation bar.
Once you are properly connected, you will be able to navigate to your new Promote page, which will look like this:
We include the following “Suggested audiences” for all channels:
Watched less than one video
Watched one video
Watched more than one video
Subscribed to the channel
Once these audiences have been enabled, they will appear in the Audiences section of the Facebook Ads account you connected. On Facebook, these audiences can be used for ad targeting. The suggested audiences we have provided are meant to help you get started and provide inspiration on the types of audiences you could be promoting your Channel to from Facebook.
Note
Although these suggested audiences specifically reference video, they will target users based on engagement data from both video and audio events.
Navigating your Facebook Audience Tool
Facebook’s Audience Tool allows you to create different types of Audiences for ad targeting. This includes Custom Audiences as well as Lookalike Audiences.
Create a Custom Audience
When you create a custom audience, Facebook offers a couple of ways that these custom audiences can be defined. You have the choice to create these audiences from a customer list (ie. .CSV import), from data on Facebook (page activity/etc.), or from website traffic. They will be accessible under Create a Custom Audience within Facebook:
Website Traffic
Website traffic is where your Facebook Pixel data lives. You will be able to leverage Wistia data to create Custom Audiences from this page. Once selected, you will see a page that resembles what’s below. From here you will be able to define the rules that make up your custom audience:
Creating audience rules
When selecting the “All website visitors” dropdown on the page, you will see a page similar to what’s below. If you would like to change these custom audience rules, first select “All website visitors” and construct the query that you want in the search bar. For example, custom audiences can be based on things like people who visited a specific webpage, visitors sorted by time spent, or all website visitors.
Note
The custom audiences available under “All website visitors” are pre-defined data points that users get “for free” with a Facebook pixel.
Below these options (within the dropdown list), you’ll see From your events. These are custom events that are being tracked on a webpage and sent to the Pixel. These events might include custom events that you have defined and implemented on your website and will also include the events that we are sending on your behalf from embedded Wistia videos or channels.
Here we have rules applied to define an audience based on users who played Wistia’s Episode 1 of Brandwagon. Within this page, you will be able to use any combination of Wistia events (Played, Seconds Played, % Played, or Subscribed) to produce audiences that allow you to target specific ads and messages to viewers or listeners who have engaged with your content in different ways:
Here is an example of what you can do with our data from the Create a Website Traffic Custom Audience Page.
Understanding the data
You can use the data you collect with Custom Audiences to re-engage users based on how they engaged with media on your website. Read on to learn how to understand the data you can collect and how you can effectively use it.
You’ll notice four pre-populated audiences that exist within Wistia.
Watched less than 50% of one video
These folks have watched or listened to less than half of an episode on your channel.
Tip
Maybe they got distracted or started watching and decided that the episode wasn’t what they were looking for. Either way, it’s valuable data to draw insights from! Use this audience to either show them another ad for the same episode (encourage them to dive back into the episode) or suppress this audience as unengaged.
Watched at least 50% of one video
This audience consists of people who have watched or listened to more than half of an episode on your channel.
Tip
From this information, you can deduce that these folks might be interested in playing more related content. Think about targeting this audience with an ad promoting another episode in your channel, or use this already engaged audience to build a Lookalike Audience.
Watched at least 50% of more than one video
Users who have watched or listened to at least half of two episodes on your channel.
Tip
They might be starting to become fans! Chances are, they’re getting hooked on your content and might want more. Use this audience to target ads that reference the previously played episodes in the promotion for upcoming episodes. This might also be a great audience to build a Lookalike one from!
Subscribed to a Channel
These audiences have subscribed to receive updates about your content.
Tip
This is a good sign that they like what your business is creating! Continually engage with these folks by targeting them with ads for upcoming episodes — they should be the first to know when new episodes are released! Use this list to build a Lookalike Audience, just like you would with your customer database.
How to start using Wistia data to create Lookalike Audiences
Ready to create your own Lookalike Audience? Once you’re in Facebook Ads Manager and have selected the Custom Audience you want to create a lookalike from, head to the Actions dropdown menu and select Create Lookalike.
The following screen will appear, where you can specify your Audience Location and Size:
For more detailed instructions on creating Lookalike Audiences using the Facebook Ads integration, check out Facebook’s Help documentation.
Best practices for creating Lookalike Audiences in Facebook
Excited to start expanding your content’s reach with Custom Audiences? Before you dive in, consider these best practices when creating Lookalike Audiences:
Start with at least 1,000 people
In order to create a Lookalike Audience, Facebook recommends that you have more than 1,000 people in your audience.
Tip
A larger source size will give Facebook more data points to create a better quality lookalike audience.
Experiment with different parameters
If you don’t quite have 1,000 people in your data set, try opening up the criteria a bit. For example, instead of choosing users who have watched more than one episode, create an audience of folks who have watched more than 50% of a single episode. This will open up your audience set, fueling future lookalike and remarketing efforts.
Remember that the bigger the audience, the less targeted it is
In the US, a 1% lookalike will get you an audience size of around 2 million people.
Tip
If you’re just getting started or if you have a limited budget, we recommend keeping your audience size closer to 1%. But if you already have campaigns that are performing well that you want to scale, bumping up the size is a good way to expand your reach.