Wistia and Facebook Ads are a match made in marketing heaven. Use our Reach & Retarget integration to connect your Facebook Ads Account to Wistia and create custom audiences based on media engagement.
Set up the Wistia - Facebook Ads integration
Note
To connect the integration, you must be an Account Owner or Manager on an Advanced or Premium Wistia plan.
Three key steps are needed to connect the integration:
Connect to Facebook Ads: Empower your Facebook Ads platform accounts with audience data from Wistia
Accept permissions: Connecting the integration will allow Wistia to manage your Ads account.
Confirm connection: Confirm that the integration is connected in Wistia and that the correct Pixel and Ads account is being used.
Connect to Facebook Ads
On the “Integrations” page in your Wistia account settings, scroll down to the “Advertising” section. Click “Connect” below the Facebook Ads integration and log in to your account.
Note
You must log in to a Facebook account with admin access to your Ads Manager.
Accept permissions
Once you’ve logged in to Facebook, you’ll be prompted to accept the requested permissions from Wistia. For the Facebook Ads integration, Wistia requires the ability to manage ads.
Once connected, the Facebook Ads integration will appear in the “Configured” section of the “Integrations” page.
Choose Ad Managers and Ad Pixels
Once the integration is connected in Wistia, you should see the name of the connected Ad Manager and Ad Pixel.
If you have multiple accounts associated with your Facebook login, you can select the desired Ad Account Manager and Pixel from each dropdown menu.
Send Wistia event data to Facebook
Wistia sends the following events to Facebook when someone watches or listens to an embedded Wistia media or Channel:
% Played
25% Played
50% Played
75% Played
100% Played
Seconds Played
Played
Subscribed
Note
The “Subscribed” event is only applicable to Channels.
Each event includes additional metadata that can be used to “refine” audience rules in Facebook’s Audience creation tool. The following data is included in each Wistia-specific event:
channel_id: The 10-character identifying string at the end of each Channel URL.
channel_name: Text reflecting the title of the Channel.
media_id: The identifying 10-character string at the end of each media URL.
media_name: Text reflecting the name of the media.
seconds_played: The number of seconds a user has spent playing a media.
Add a suggested audience to your Wistia Channel
First, ensure you’re viewing a Channel and choose the “Promote” tab from the left-hand navigation bar.
Once the integration is connected, you can navigate to your new “Promote” page.
The following suggested audiences are included in all Channels:
Watched less than 50% of one video
Watched at least 50% of one video
Watched at least 50% of more than one video
Subscribed to a Channel
Once these audiences are enabled, they’ll appear in the “Audiences” section of your connected Facebook Ads account. Wistia’s suggested audiences are intended to help you get started and provide inspiration on the types of audiences to whom you can promote your Channel on Facebook.
Note
Although these suggested audiences specifically reference video, they will target users based on engagement data from both video and audio events.
Create Facebook audiences
The “Audiences” page in your Ads Manager allows you to create different groups for ad targeting, including custom and lookalike Audiences.
Create a custom audience
Facebook offers a few options for defining a custom audience, including uploading an existing list (e.g., CSV import), Facebook data (e.g., page activity), or website traffic. These options are listed in the “Create a custom audience” modal in Facebook.
Website traffic
Website traffic is where your Facebook Pixel data lives. You can leverage Wistia data to create custom audiences on this page. From here, you can define the rules that make up your custom audience.
Create audience rules
To change custom audience rules, select “All website visitors” and construct the query in the search bar. For example, you can build custom audiences based on factors like people who visited a specific webpage, visitors sorted by time spent, or all website visitors.
Note
The custom audiences under “All website visitors” are pre-defined data points that users get “for free” with a Facebook pixel.
Below the options in the dropdown list, you’ll see a “From your events” option. These custom events are tracked on a webpage and sent to the Pixel. These events might include custom events you’ve defined and implemented on your website. They’ll also include the events we send on your behalf from embedded Wistia videos or Channels.
In this example, we’ve defined a custom audience based on users who played the first episode of Wistia’s “Brandwagon”. On this page, you can 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.
Understanding the data
You can use the data you collect with custom audiences to re-engage users based on their engagement 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 in 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 wanted. Either way, it’s valuable data from which to draw insights! Use this audience to either show them another ad for the same episode (encourage them to dive back in) 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. Consider 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: Viewers 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 group to build a lookalike audience!
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.
Create a lookalike audience
Once you’re in Facebook Ads Manager and have selected the custom Audience from which you want to make a lookalike, open 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 documentation.
Best practices for lookalike audiences
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. To create a Lookalike Audience, Facebook recommends having 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 have 1,000 people in your data set, try expanding the criteria slightly. 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 have a limited budget, we recommend keeping your audience size closer to 1%. But if you already have campaigns performing well that you want to scale, bumping up the size is a good way to expand your reach.