Beauty mavens are hungry for video. The beauty space on YouTube continues to explode, and now, beauty consumers are turning to video on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Snapchat as well to shape their brand decisions. Now more than ever, beauty marketers need a sophisticated advertising strategy to achieve success on social video platforms.
In our third-annual beauty study, we uncovered several data-driven best practices that beauty marketers need to know to execute high-performing video ad campaigns.

Here’s what beauty marketers need to know:

1. Develop digital-first content. Compared to repurposed commercials, video content that’s made for digital generates higher engagement rates. Pixability’s data shows that YouTube videos should be around 4 minutes in length to effectively engage a beauty audience. But social video advertising isn’t one-size-fits-all. For optimal performance, cross-platform content must be produced according to each platform’s distinct specifications, whether vertical or landscape format, with sound on or muted.
2. Understand seasonality. By understanding what type of content is rapidly gaining views and engagements, and which categories display seasonal spikes, beauty marketers can capitalize on emerging trends and more effectively target ad campaigns against in-season themes. For example, YouTube searches related to Red Lipstick spike during the winter months, while Lip Gloss searches are most popular during summer.
3. Target against emerging categories. Tutorial content dominates on YouTube, garnering 70% of views and close to 13M engagements, but high-performing categories have emerged this year, including Tips/Hacks, Vlog, …Does My Makeup, and Reviews. On Facebook, 20% of interactions about hair come from men discussing hair products. Advertisers can increase brand visibility and share of voice by creating content for, and targeting ads against, in-demand categories.

Data-driven insights like these help advertisers develop sophisticated advertising strategies, by illuminating the content that resonates most with beauty mavens across YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Snapchat.
Download a snapshot of the 2016 Beauty Study now to get more of Pixability’s insights on the beauty space across the social video ecosystem, and contact us today to set up a meeting and get the full 2016 Beauty Study.