New Video Ads

Ads for Choices Pregnancy Services and Women's Choice Network running on Facebook

We are told that users of Facebook give more attention to video ads than to regular photo ads. We have experimented with some variations on photo ads, boosted from our Facebook pages "Pittsburgh Choices," "Choose Together - Pittsburgh," and "Unexpected," using Facebook's "carousel" ad option, and, as I recall, the results in terms of numbers of click-thru's to websites, was positive. Now we are trying our hand at video.

Personally, as a photographer, I much prefer the still image, but as an advertiser, I see the value in video. It's also a lot of fun getting a team together and going out and shooting. The work afterwards in post-processing takes a lot of time -- more than one expects. Telling a story, however, is an enjoyable, creative challenge. Here's a sample, the version for Women's Choice Network.

You can see the video for Choices Pregnancy Services on Youtube at ​https://youtu.be/QZYqTEcQPdk

We have enough raw footage for another two months, and it takes about a week to prepare one 45-second video. The ads are directed to the friends of abortion-vulnerable women in Allegheny County and parts of Beaver County, reasoning that increasing knowledge of the existence of the centers among the 18-28 demographic increases the likelihood that women will tell their friends that the centers exist, if and when they learn of friends' pregnancies. And of course pregnant women thinking about abortion will see it, too.

The ads went up on Monday, December 4, and have been seen by about 4,900 women. 77 of them have clicked on the links to the center's websites, and 95 have watched at least half the video. This is a pretty response, I think, for the two days the ads have been up. We'll see at the end of the month what the totals are.
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