BACK TO ALL ARTICLES
October 8, 2020
Facebook brand awareness campaigns can help millions of people see and recognize your brand.
Whether you’re a Visa, McDonald’s, or the mom-and-pop down the street, big and small brands alike must regularly run campaigns with brand awareness ads.
Historically, brand awareness ads ran on TV and giant billboards. They were also featured on smaller-scale street or bus stop banners.
For example, these Spotify ads – Image source
Today, online advertising thrives. A prevailing number of advertisers are loyal to online platforms like Facebook and Youtube. Why? Because digital media consistently yields the highest returns on investment.
Given the general success of online advertising, it’s unsurprising that advertisers implement Facebook and YouTube for brand advertising too. And they experience huge success doing so.
Visa’s Facebook brand awareness ad
If you haven’t tried Facebook brand awareness ads yet, give it a go. There’s a lot to be gained and little to lose – you can run a test with as little as a $1,000 investment.
Let’s dig a little deeper.
Awareness advertising on Facebook has several benefits:
In this guide, we’ll cover a range of questions that advertisers often have. For example, what is the brand awareness objective? How to set up a successful brand campaign? And how to measure success.
If you’re already aware of what brand awareness advertising is and how it works, skip to the section showing 15 Facebook brand ad examples. We’ll get into the details around best practices, examples, and hacks.
The first rule of brand awareness ads is this: you should use them in a mix with other advertising types.
Many advertisers launch a brand awareness campaign and expect a huge increase in customers and sales.
In effect, they set themselves up for a nasty surprise. For the most part, brand awareness ads alone do not convert the viewers into customers.
Avoid the awareness ad mistakes – Image source
The main goal of brand campaigns is not to drive sales.
Instead, the aim should be to ensure your company is the first people think about when they need a service you offer. As a result, people who have seen your brand awareness ads are more likely to convert into customers later when they see your prospecting or remarketing ads.
With this in mind, a marketing funnel can help contextualized where Brand awareness ads fit in your marketing strategy.
Most marketing funnels consist of 5-6 different stages:
The awareness ads are only the first step to get people into your marketing funnel.
Given awareness ads position in your marketing funnel, always follow up with a solid Facebook PPC strategy. The strategy will help your leads eventually make it to the Buy/Sale stage.
Example of a marketing funnel with related PPC activities
At Linear, we help our customers to set up a mix of Facebook ad campaigns that contribute to increased sales – the final goal of most advertising strategies.
Here’s an example list of Facebook ad campaigns that an advertiser could have:
Each of the ad campaigns above has its own goal, time, and place. Remember: use brand awareness ads in a mix of advertising campaigns and objectives.
Brand awareness ads mostly have the same goal – to make a big group of people familiar with your product or service. Achieving that goal is more nuanced.
Here are some additional brand advertising objectives:
Let’s look at some of the brand campaigns that have caught our eye in recent years.
The Whopper Detour was one of the most celebrated ad campaigns of 2019 and earned Burger King a lot of buzz, new customers, and advertising awards.
Here’s what they did: Burger King came up with the idea to give out its signature Whoppers for just $0.01 – the only catch was that customers must order from a McDonald’s location via Burger King’s app.
See the full video here – YouTube
Another cool thing about this campaign is that it used a mix of online and offline advertising mediums: mobile app, YouTube, and other social media channels. There was also the unexpected twist requiring physical proximity to a direct competitor’s restaurant.
For several years, Spotify, the online music streaming platform, has been sharing statistics about both general and user-specific music listening preferences.
In December 2019, Spotify created a personalized online page for each of its listeners. The campaign showed people their most listened to songs, favorite artists, and most popular genres.
Spotify’s 2019 Wrapped campaign – Image source
To accompany the digital campaign, Spotify also advertised in outdoor placements and shared a press release with interesting global statistics.
As a result, tens of thousands of people shared screenshots of their personalized listening reports. This activity helped reinforce Spotify’s brand image as a highly personalized music streaming service that predicts what you like – a massive gain in brand awareness.
Nike’s “Just Do It” brand slogan is a landmark example of years-long brand building. They have used the tagline as long as we can remember: throughout offline and online brand awareness campaigns.
Here’s an interesting overview of Nike’s brand marketing initiatives to boost its brand awareness: from collaborations to TV ads to Facebook advertising.
Nike has built its brand across marketing channels – Image source
As a result, Nike has become a household name for anyone interested in sports, personal training, and a healthy lifestyle.
While all of the above examples came from well-known brands, remember that they all started small.
And it was greatly thanks to brand building that they could take on some bigger competitors: Burger King vs. McDonald’s, Nike vs. Adidas, Spotify vs. iTunes.
In the past, running a brand awareness campaign was expensive: you had to produce a TV advertisement (that could cost north of $100k) and spend another $500k or more on buying TV ad placements.
Outdoor advertising – banners in the bus stops and giant billboards – can still cost a lot, especially in cities with high population density.
However, things are changing: people spend more time consuming content on their mobile devices than TV.
Mobile video is taking on TV – Image source
This shift means that there exists a vast audience that you can reach with online brand awareness ads.
In fact, online video ads (such a Facebook brand awareness ads) have several benefits over traditional advertising media:
Let’s get more eyes on your brand – Image source
To get started with brand advertising, follow these steps:
To help you succeed with your Facebook brand awareness campaigns, we’ve jotted down some of the best practices that work for most brands.
Let’s take a quick look at each of these best practices to help you build a memorable and beloved brand.
Before you can run any Facebook brand awareness ads, you have to know the story you want to tell. In other words, who are you as a brand?
Every successful brand has a powerful purpose behind it. Try to find your own.
With this in mind, ask yourself these four ‘golden’ questions when defining a brand purpose:
Answer the Golden Circle questions – Image Source
Remember to be authentic and find a brand message that is unique and true to your company.
To address the “Why should people care?” question, think of how your product improves people’s lives.
One notable way of demonstrating the ‘why’ of your product can be established through a Unique Selling Proposition (USP).
The advertising legend Rosser Reeves explained that your USP should have three parts:
To give you an example from the Facebook brand awareness ads playbook, here’s one ad by Klarna. It states clearly what a person can do when downloading their app.
Klarna’s ad has a clear value proposition
It is sometimes impossible to find a unique value proposition. So focus on a value proposition (without the unique) instead. Or… find a unique angle that will catch people’s attention.
Here’s one of the advertisements that David Ogilvy created for Campbell’s – it shows the product from an entirely new side.
Find either a unique or a creative value proposition – Image source
It’s important to realize that many awareness campaigns communicate a message that could be told by many other brands. However, if you work consistently to make a USP your own, you can become the market leader in your product category.
Knowledge of your target audience is an absolute must-have in brand marketing.
Specifically, you can define your brand voice and select the best visual language based on whom you’re addressing.
For example, brands targeting a young audience might pick bright colors and fast-moving ad creatives.
Topshop’s ad targets young adults
To learn how to define your target audience best, read our guide on customer personas.
Once you know your key messages and target audience, it will be a lot easier to develop a suitable advertising strategy.
Part of this strategy should be to reach target audiences by specific advertising channels. For example:
The nice thing about Facebook advertising is that you can define a specific audience based on various parameters: age, gender, and location to niche interests and behavioral patterns.
Different advertising channels require unique approaches as well as various formats of ad creatives.
For example, the ride-hailing company Bolt ran an advertising campaign in London that included online and offline ad placements.
While their billboard and Facebook ad styles are similar, they are optimized for different advertising platforms.
Here’s an example of their billboard ad in the London Tube:
Offline advertisement example
And here’s a corresponding Facebook ad. Note that the Facebook ad directs to the App Store. In contrast to the print ad creatives, there’s no need to include App Store icons on the image.
Facebook advertisement example
Once you decide which marketing channels you’ll use for your awareness campaign, make a list of all required ad formats. It will help you keep track of your ad creatives.
Regardless of your ad format, there are some tips that can be applied across the board.
In general, these hacks will help make your brand awareness ads more engaging:
One of the biggest brand-building mistakes advertisers make is running a one-off brand awareness campaign without follow-up actions.
In contrast, think about leading brands – Apple, Nike, Disney, and the like. They are constantly investing in their brand and reinventing it.
Likewise, make sure you have a long-term brand strategy in place too.
This strategy should include a mix of offline and online marketing activities done weekly and product updates, and improvements to deliver on your brand promise.
This leads us to the next point…
Everything you do should reinforce your brand message.
Also, if you promise something in your brand campaigns, you should deliver on that promise.
For example, the car brand Volvo has branded itself as the safest car available.
Volvo is betting big on safety – Image source
But Volvo isn’t just saying they’re safe. They’ve invested millions, if not billions in Research and Development (R&D) since 1944.
Volvo’s recent innovations include pedestrian and cyclist detection with auto-brake and head-on crash detection.
To reiterate, whether you promise the best prices, the highest quality, or a more eco-friendly product, make sure that there’s truth behind your words.
It’s the key to building long-term loyalty among your customers.
Let’s assume that you’ve figured out your brand awareness strategy and know what messages and ad creatives you want to use. The next step is to set up your campaign.
So how can you set up your awareness campaign? We’re here to answer this question and recommend some best practices next.
Select the “Brand awareness” objective
During this process, Facebook Ads will ask if you’d like to use Campaign Budget Optimization. We suggest to keep it on so that Facebook can distribute the budget between all the ad sets in your campaign.
In the next phase of campaign setup, you can build your target audience.
If your goal is to reach a high number of people, we suggest that you keep your audience larger than 1 million people.
However, depending on your customer personas, you may want to define the location, age, gender, and broad interests of the people to target.
Define your target audience
Tip: If your goal is to reach new users, exclude the Custom Audiences of existing users from your brand awareness campaigns.
As with most Facebook advertising campaigns, it is best to use the automated placements and let Facebook’s algorithms to do the targeting.
Use automatic ad placements
When using the brand awareness campaign objective, there is only one available ad delivery optimization method: Ad Recall Lift. This method lets Facebook show your ads to people most likely to be interested in your brand (and most likely to remember it).
Brand awareness campaigns are optimized on ad recall
Once you set up your audience targeting, it’s time to add your ad creatives. A good number of ads per campaign is anywhere between 3-6.
Tip: You can create a few video ads with slightly different messaging. This method will let you see which one works best for your target audience. In effect, which one results in the highest ad recall lift and the lowest Cost per 1000 Views (CPM).
Additionally, make sure to cover all the main Facebook ad sizes, from 1:1 format to Instagram Story ads.
Cover all three ad formats – Image source
Take a look at the 15 Facebook brand awareness ad examples below to inspire your campaigns.
Once you publish your new Facebook ads campaign, give it at least 48h to start delivering. Avoid making conclusions too early.
We suggest running brand awareness campaigns for at least two weeks. Some big brands run their Facebook branding ads all the time, rarely pausing the campaigns but changing the creatives from time to time.
Also, keep in mind that most brand awareness campaigns won’t bring an immediate uplift in sales.
You should run additional Facebook campaigns for remarketing on the side to convert the people who saw your branding ads into customers.
Which leads us to the next question: If you can’t measure brand awareness campaigns’ success in direct sales uplift, how can you tell whether they’re successful?
Brand awareness advertising is evaluated on different metrics than prospecting and remarketing ads.
Instead of measuring sales, cost-per-lead, or Return on Ad Spend (ROAS), you should look at the following metrics:
Measuring brand awareness campaign results
The numbers you see in your campaign reports can vary significantly per campaign. Variation will depend on your target audience size, campaign budget and duration, seasonality, and ad creatives.
However, after running 1-2 brand awareness ad campaigns, you can start benchmarking your campaigns against each other and learning how your metrics look.
We suggest keeping a spreadsheet with all brand awareness campaign results so that it’s easy to compare all past and future campaigns.
To help advertisers evaluate the success of their online brand awareness campaigns, Facebook launched a tool named Brand Lift Test.
The Brand Lift Test lets you use brand polling and other brand awareness measurement to evaluate your Facebook brand advertising’s actual value. It works by dividing your target audience into randomized test and control groups and comparing these groups’ performance over time.
You can run a Brand Lift study on specific Facebook ad campaigns or across all of your Facebook advertising.
After running a Brand Lift Test, you will see results similar to these:
Facebook Brand Lift study results
The easiest way to run a brand awareness measurement study is by setting up a brand survey test.
Here’s how the test works:
Learn how to create a Brand Lift Test step-by-step in Experiments.
To set up a Brand Lift Test, go to the Experiments section of your Facebook Ads Manager.
Go to the Experiments section
Select the Brand Survey option and click Get Started to set up your test.
Select the Brand Survey option
Next up, you can select whether you want to run the Brand Lift Test for your entire ad account or just specific ad campaigns.
If your goal is to measure particular Facebook brand awareness ads’ results, select only the campaigns with those ads.
Additionally, you can run a Brand Lift Study for new campaigns that you are yet to launch.
Select campaigns included in your Brand Lift Test
Now, it’s time to set up your poll questions.
Your brand survey can include up to 3 questions about:
Select up to 3 polling questions
You can also select to measure conversion lift (does your campaign help drive purchases?) during your test.
Measuring conversion lift won’t affect your brand lift test, but you must already be sending conversions events to the Facebook Pixel to use this feature.
Once you are happy with your Brand Lift Study, review the details and click on Create Test to submit it for setup.
P.S. Facebook Brand Lift Tests require a minimum budget spend, depending on the region where you advertise. For example, in the US, the minimum spend on running a brand study is $30,000. See all the minimum spend requirements here.
The minimum ad spend might be too high for smaller brands. If you don’t want to spend $30,000 to run a Facebook Brand Lift Test, you can simply evaluate your brand campaigns based on the metrics shared above (Reach, CPM, Frequency, Video Views %, etc.).
Enough of the theory!
Let’s look at 15 examples of cool and engaging Facebook brand awareness ads to get new creative ideas flowing.
Be inspired by the following ads – Image source
Note that Facebook brand awareness ads can be video and static image format.
However, it’s more common for brands to use video ads in the brand awareness stage.
The cosmetics brand Clinique used a Facebook brand awareness campaign to drive online sales.
As reported by Facebook, the company saw a 22% lift in online sales, a 7% lift in in-store sales, and had an estimated 1.8 million people influenced by the campaign.
See the full video ad here
The campaign used a mix of video ads and carousel ads to showcase their product.
Clinique carousel ad example
Notice how they’ve aligned the ad creatives’ style and colors perfectly with Clinique’s dust-pink brand.
Time to Change is a joint initiative by UK mental-health charities focused on improving male mental health in the UK.
The awareness ads campaign drew attention with video ads on Facebook and Instagram. A lighthearted video showed a man crushed by a tree in a forest, while a friendly squirrel asks him if he is okay.
This ad campaign invited the viewer to continue to Facebook Messenger, where they could interact with a Messenger experience that shared guidance on helping a male friend.
One thing to learn from this campaign is how to catch the viewer’s attention in the first 3 seconds. By adding a talking squirrel to the video, the advertiser could lock people’s attention and get them to watch the video until the end.
Most brand awareness ads talk about the brand itself, but not always.
Mastercard created a campaign with a special #StartSomethingPriceless through which they could tell their customers’ stories, inspiring people to follow their passion.
Mastercard’s brand awareness ad
Collaboration with your customers and other brands is a great way to uplift others and build a friendly and engaging brand image.
In a nod to the holiday season, Nutella Germany created video ads that encouraged people to spend time with family and use their product while baking.
According to Facebook, the campaign brought a 9% uplift in sales among people reached and a 27% sales uplift for new buyers. By using Facebook ad placement as an addition to TV ads, Nutella could get 2.5 million additional viewers.
Notice how the video ad follows the Facebook video ads best practice, introducing the product immediately at the beginning of the ad.
Google’s brand awareness ad invites people to search for the keyword “support businesses near me” and brings people together with charities in need of donations.
The concept of bringing people together with others in need supports Google’s broader brand messaging around connecting the world and doing good.
The design of Google’s video ad is simple and clear, reflecting its search engine’s branding.
Voi’s brand awareness ad immediately shows the service they offer: e-scooter rentals.
The ad creative has a fun and approachable illustrated style, making the brand more memorable as they use similar branding throughout all of their marketing assets.
This brand awareness ad’s goal isn’t just to inform new people of the Voi brand – it’s also to get new subscribers for their e-scooter pass. Hence the “Subscribe” call-to-action button.
Oreo’s brand awareness ad is designed for the Instagram and Facebook Stories format.
This example is a good reminder to include the correct creative size for a Stories placement when you create video ads for Facebook.
The video itself is fun and features bright colors – Oreo is clearly interested in addressing a younger audience.
The ‘Only Deodorant for Everyone’s Everything’ is one Facebook brand awareness example that embodies the power of vibrant storytelling paired with tailored ad creative. In this case, Lume Deodorant used this combo to break into an already-saturated market.
According to Facebook, the ad campaign delivered a 3.5X ROAS. Additionally, precise initial audience targeting and customized ad creative across all marketing funnel levels resulted in a 7x lift in purchases.
See the full video here.
The above video is long-form for YouTube. Still, notice the smart creative elements and nimble transitions between the hook, product testimonials, and features/benefits.
Hint: you’ve got to make it fast and interesting to hold people’s attention.
The Facebook brand awareness ad by McDonald’s doesn’t focus on their product. However, it delivers a positive, eco-friendly brand message.
See the full video here
However, if your brand is still unknown to most people, we recommend focusing on advertising your unique value proposition and product benefits.
The inspirational branding ads work best for brands that already have strong brand recognition in the market.
Volkswagen is a classic example of a TV-style branding advertisement adjusted for a Facebook ad campaign. Hence the long video instead of Facebook’s suggested: under 15 seconds.
However, the ad looks great and makes you want to keep viewing to find out what comes next. At least it worked this way on us.
Storytelling in video ads is a clever way of showcasing your product while keeping the viewer hooked with a compelling storyline.
Here’s a bit more insight into how they set up the campaign:
Volkswagen edited existing videos and photos of the car to create compelling lead ads for Facebook, Instagram, and Stories. At the first stage, the campaign was broadly targeting all potential adult car buyers aged 25 and older. The ad invited them to register interest in the new T-Cross.
After the launch, Volkwagen narrowed its target audience to younger drivers aged 25–44, to whom they designed the new car to appeal.
The goal of this ad campaign was to get people to register their pre-launch interest. A whopping 45% of all pre-launch leads came from lead ads on Facebook and Instagram.
Snickers’ brand awareness ad uses daily news and invites people to send a chocolate bar to essential workers.
This type of brand messaging strengthens the positive brand image and offers the existing fans an opportunity to do something cool.
Snickers’s Facebook brand ad
The tactic of using relevant news in your advertising messaging is called newsjacking. You can read more about it here.
This brand awareness ad by the World Wide Fund (WWF) reached 7.6 million viewers.
The campaign’s goal was to reach an audience unfamiliar with the climate debate and increase awareness while finding new advocates.
See the full video add here
Things to learn from this video ad include a bold use of text, fast-paced scenes, and interesting black-and-white video footage.
Brand awareness ads are relevant to more than Business to Consumer (B2C) brands. Business services and software vendors can benefit as well.
For example, look at the below ad example by MailChimp: it doesn’t showcase their main product, an online email marketing solution. Instead, it positions them as a youthful and bold brand.
Mailchimp uses a static image ad
Also, Mailchimp has chosen to use a static image as opposed to a video. Static images can be a good option if you don’t have the time or resources to produce video ads.
While Revolut’s ad is actually an app install ad, it still helps increase their brand awareness. After all, they are boldly advertising their logo.
That’s an interesting approach if you’ve just launched in a new market and want to raise brand awareness fast. Bonus tip: there is no easier way to design a Facebook ad than placing your logo on a colorful background.
Revolut’s ad is all about their logo
However, it looks like later on, Revolut shifted their advertising creatives to showcase their bank card and mobile app. You can run a Facebook ads A/B test to see what type of visual works best for you.
SPAM, a canned pork brand, created a video ad that illustrates alternate uses for their product. Specifically, you can use it over noodles, too.
They could have delivered the same message through a simple static image creative. However, SPAM can get more attention using video. While many people might find canned pork irrelevant, hordes are familiar with late-night meals of ramen or cup-o-noodle. This mouth-watering comfort food reel will make me think of SPAM the next time I dress up my soup.
Spam + Noodles = The best of broth worlds.
Just remember: when creating Facebook brand awareness ads for a new brand, remember to clarify your product and its benefits.
In case you skipped some parts of this article, here are the top 10 things to remember about Facebook brand awareness ad campaigns:
Using data collected from our in-depth audit, we’ll deliver a detailed plan to grow your business month after month. Your proposal includes:
WRITTEN BY
Luke Heinecke
Like what you read?
Your free proposal is overflowing with improvements.
RELATED ARTICLES
Google PPC Management Services: Your Guide to the Best Options
Discover top google ppc management services, expert tips, and proven strategies to boost ROI and ach...
June 16, 2025
Google Ads Tag Manager: Streamlining Your Ad Tracking
Streamline tracking and boost ROI with google ads tag manager. Learn setup, privacy features, and pr...
June 9, 2025
Understanding Google PPC Charges: A Cost Guide
Learn how google ppc charges work, what impacts your costs, and how to budget and optimize your Goog...
June 4, 2025
End of the Road: How to Close Your Google Ads Manager Account
Learn how to delete google ads manager account step-by-step, including requirements, troubleshooting...
May 28, 2025
Made with 💙 in Utah