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Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is due to testify before members of European Parliament (MEPs) tomorrow, in an appearance that was confirmed by President Antonio Tajani on Twitter last week.

Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook CEO and founder, has accepted our invitation. He will come to the European Parliament. My full statement ⤵️ pic.twitter.com/FdmuDPl8Wb

— Antonio Tajani (@EP_President)
May 16, 2018

Zuckerberg is due to appear before the Committee for Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs (LIBE), where he’ll likely be asked questions about protecting the personal data of EU consumers, as well as Facebook’s role in election processes and integrity.

The session — which is scheduled to begin at roughly 6:15 PM local time in Brussels (12:15 PM EST) — was speculated and predicted by many in the weeks leading up to Tajani’s confirmation.

In addition to some outlets reporting that such a meeting was in the works, several events took place soon before and after the announcement that indicated another appearance from Zuckerberg before legal officials, ranging from official statements on Facebook’s new initiatives, to changes within its organizational chart.

Before Zuckerberg makes his next official appearance, here are some key things to know.

5 Things to Know Before Mark Zuckerberg’s European Parliament Testimony

1. The testimony was originally scheduled as a closed-door session.

Shortly after Tajani’s announcement, Bloomberg reported that Zuckerberg’s initial appearance before EU lawmakers would take place behind closed doors, and that European Parliament would schedule a separate, public hearing with representatives from Facebook that may not necessarily include Zuckerberg himself.

I have personally discussed with Facebook CEO Mr Zuckerberg the possibilty of webstreaming meeting with him. I am glad to announce that he has accepted this new request. Great news for EU citizens. I thank him for the respect shown towards EP. Meeting tomorrow from 18:15 to 19:30

— Antonio Tajani (@EP_President)
May 21, 2018

While a secondary hearing has yet to be scheduled as of publishing this piece, Tajani announced this morning that Zuckerberg agreed to permit the session to be live-streamed — likely due to pressure from several parties, including MEPs.

I will not attend the meeting with Mr Zuckerberg if it’s held behind closed doors. It must be a public hearing – why not a Facebook Live? I strongly regret that the @EPPGroup has colluded with extreme right to keep everything behind closed doors. https://t.co/uYqEDlRtyo

— Guy Verhofstadt (@guyverhofstadt)
May 16, 2018

In our own survey of 313 consumers in the UK — which was conducted prior to the announcement that the session would be live-streamed — 61% of respondents said that they believed the testimony should be public.

Verhofstadt has since reversed his statement on the matter, after the decision to cast the session. However, the degree to which the event will be “public” is arguable, as it’s not clear if members of the press or other concerned public parties will be permitted to attend.

2. Not long before the testimony was originally announced, Facebook’s executive org chart had a major shakeup.

On May 8 — just over a week before Tajani’s confirmation that Zuckerberg would be testifying before MEPs — Recode reported a major shuffle to its executive organizational chart, with changes made among the leadership at WhatsApp, Messenger, Instagram, and the core Facebook app.

Here’s a visual peek at the overall changes:

Same faces, new jobs. Many dudes. pic.twitter.com/PXaZAwK4Z0

— Sarah Frier (@sarahfrier)
May 8, 2018

In addition to the general re-org of leadership within existing Facebook teams and umbrella brands, a new team has been created to focus solely on privacy products, such as the Clear History feature announced at F8. 

When word of the executive shuffle first arrived, we anticipated that an official appearance from Zuckerberg could be imminent — especially with the creation of an entire division dedicated to one of the issues (privacy) for which Facebook has received the most scrutiny, and continues to answer the most questions.

Why do I sense that where there’s a Facebook executive re-org, there are overseas hearings to follow?

— Amanda Zantal-Wiener (@Amanda_ZW)
May 9, 2018

But privacy isn’t the only topic for which Facebook has faced particularly heightened scrutiny — which brings up another important item to keep in mind going into tomorrow’s session.

3. The day after the testimony was announced, Facebook announced a partnership with the Atlantic Council for its election integrity efforts.

Facebook has also continued to receive criticism and questions about the weaponization of its platform by foreign actors to influence the 2016 U.S. presidential elections. Since then, consumer and authorities alike have been especially vigilant of the spread of misinformation and hate speech on the site, especially where divisive issues that often cause contention during election seasons are concerned.

That prompted Facebook to release its first-ever Community Standards Enforcement Report, which includes a preliminary inventory of rule-violating content and the action Facebook took on it between October 2017 to March 2018.

But it also led Facebook — whether strictly for appearances or out of genuine concern over the weaponization of its platform — to partner with outside experts to boost its election integrity efforts, which Zuckerberg is likely to be questioned on by MEPs.

To help combat “fake accounts – the source of many bad ads and a lot of misinformation,” Facebook has partnered with nonprofit Atlantic Council, whose mission includes “stimulating dialogue and discussion about critical international issues in the Administration, the Congress, corporate and nonprofit sectors, and the media among leaders in the U.S., Europe, Asia, and the Americas.” 

The Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab — the primary team partnering with Facebook — released a statement about the collaboration, in which it elaborated on that mission. Specifically, it pointed to the importance of closing the “information gap between governments, tech companies, and media in order to solve for challenges like disinformation.”

It was an interesting statement to make the day after it was first revealed that Zuckerberg’s session with MEPs would be a closed-door one, limiting the very transparency between governments and tech companies to which the statement alluded.

It also came after a recent and repeated refusal from Facebook of requests from UK Parliament for Zuckerberg to appear — which is another key item to note before tomorrow’s session.

4. UK Parliament has requested an appearance from Zuckerberg repeatedly — and Facebook has continued to decline.

On May 1 — just over two weeks prior to Tajani’s announcement — House of Commons Culture Committee chairman Damian Collins issued an open letter to Facebook UK Head of Public Policy Rebecca Stimson, stating that “the committee will resolve to issue a formal summons for [Zuckerberg] to appear when he is next in the UK.” 

In response to that letter, Stimson wrote a response on May 14th indicating that “Mr. Zuckerberg has no plans to meet with the committee or travel to the UK at the present time.”

Zuckerberg’s resolve to not appear before UK Parliament raises several questions. While other Facebook executives have undergone questioning from the committee, like CTO Mike Schroepfer, Zuckerberg himself has steadfastly refused to appear, despite committing to back-to-back U.S. congressional hearings, as well as tomorrow’s testimony before MEPs.

The @facebook data breach was executed @Cambridge_Uni and the data went to UK company @CamAnalytica The data breach affected over 1 million UK Facebook users. I think @CommonsCMS should be able to question Mark Zuckerberg about this and the lessons to be learned from it

— Damian Collins (@DamianCollins)
May 20, 2018

So, why the resistance to testifying before UK MPs?

One possible reason is that Zuckerberg’s appearances before U.S. lawmakers were voluntary — as will be his testimony before MEPs — whereas UK Parliament has reached the point of issuing a formal summons.

“It’s not entirely clear why Zuckerberg is resisting appearing before UK members of parliament,” says Henry Franco, HubSpot’s social media editor. “We know that the tone from the UK has been a fairly vindictive one, and we also know Zuckerberg (and Facebook) doesn’t want to open the door to negotiation and questioning from every governing body. They want a free and independent Facebook, which means answering the bare minimum number of questions necessary to keep it that way.”

5. The testimony is taking place three days before the General Data Privacy Regulation (GDPR) comes into force in the EU.

This Friday — three days after Zuckerberg’s scheduled testimony before MEPs — the GDPR comes into force in the EU, marking a major shift in European data privacy laws and consumer rights.

Whether the timing was deliberate is somewhat speculative, but it appears to be slightly more than coincidental — at least on the part of European Parliament. Facebook has received criticism for its approach to the GDPR, and Zuckerberg has frequently evaded questions about how he would apply similar protections to non-EU consumers, or backpedaled on previous answers to them.

Rep. Green is the first to bring up the GDPR and it coming into force next month. Asks about Zuckerberg’s intention to make the same settings and protections available to Americans. “Yes Congressman, all the same protections will be available … around the world.”

— Amanda Zantal-Wiener (@Amanda_ZW)
April 11, 2018

Many wonder how these imminent regulations — which are much stricter than those, if any, in the U.S. — will influence MEPs’ lines of questioning tomorrow, and if those questions will reflect the tougher nature of European laws than those in the U.S.

The general consensus seems to be that, yes — they will. When we asked 302 consumers in the UK if they believe MEPs will be harder on Zuckerberg during tomorrow’s hearing than U.S. lawmakers were in April, 48% responded with “yes.”

In a survey of 303 U.S. consumers, meanwhile, 53% of respondents had the same answer.

“My sense is that the big difference between the EU and the U.S., is that consumers in the U.S. kind of don’t care,” says HubSpot VP of Marketing Jon Dick. “We just assume we’re being taken advantage of, and are okay with it.”

The heightened level of concern among European consumers, meanwhile, could be reflected in a tougher line of questioning from MEPs tomorrow.

“Consumers in the EU care. They want proper notice and controls, and they want companies to be held to account if they violate their data privacy,” Dick continues. “So my expectation is that EU Parliment will be far tougher on [him] than the U.S. Congress was.”

We’ll be following tomorrow’s testimony. According to a tweet from Carlo Corazza, a spokesperson for Tajani, the event will be live-streamed on European Parliament’s website. 

“Video marketing” is one of today’s hottest industry buzzwords — and, of course, we at Animoto agree that video is a priceless tool when it comes to engaging your audience, sharing stories and information, promoting products and services, piquing interest, and more.

But we also know that video in and of itself isn’t a magic bullet. You should never go into any marketing initiative assuming what’s going to work. You need to test to find out what works for your company, your audience, and your objectives.

To that end, we set out to take Animoto’s HubSpot-inspired video templates for a spin. We ran thousands of dollars worth of tests with Facebook Ads Manager to see how video stood up to other types of content — when it worked, when it didn’t, and how to optimize its performance.

We were interested in answering these questions:

• Do videos really perform better than images or links?
• When it comes to videos, which types perform best?

Here’s what we found out.

Videos or images? Which perform better?

The first question we set out to answer was: do videos really perform better than images in Facebook ads?

The answer: it really depends on the video or image!

Test 1: Video vs. Blog Post Meta-Image

We started with a test driving traffic to a post on the HubSpot blog, 22 Companies With Really Catchy Slogans & Brand Taglines. We tested a video teaser, with a taste of what the blog post had to offer, against a simple shared-link posting that auto-pulled the meta-image from the blog post.

Vs.

The Results

What did we find? The video outperformed the image … by a lot. The video got 20 percent more clicks than the image.

But wait, we asked ourselves. Was that really the best image to promote this blog post? What did a cityscape really say about catchy slogans and brand taglines? We went back to the drawing board on our next test to see if video would still perform better than image if the image was optimized.

Test 2: Video vs. Optimized Image

For our next test, we decided to promote a different HubSpot blog post, How to Recover From a Bad Sales Call. This time we tested two different video variations — one listicle, featuring three of the tips from the post, and one with more or a narrative appeal that speaks to the viewers. Check out both in the following video:

The two videos were run alongside an image test, but this time we pulled a relevant screenshot from the video that made it clear what people would get if they clicked through.

The Results

With an optimized image, things turned out a little differently. This time, the image actually beat one of the videos — the listicle. The image got more clicks at a lower cost than this video.

However, the narrative video won out in the end with the most clicks and a 3 percent lower cost per click. The narrative video had a 34 percent lower cost per click than the listicle.

Takeaway: It’s all about testing.

In the end, it turned out that videos don’t always perform best, and images don’t always perform best either. It really depends on the content. We saw image perform better than some videos, and videos perform better than some images. But testing different types of marketing collateral allowed us to figure out what type of ad and content would maximize ROI for the particular use case.

Optimizing Ad Creative

So if you’re embarking on a Facebook ad campaign, or really any type of social ad campaign, how do you ensure you’re getting started with optimized creative? We’ll break down some general rules to help you get started, based on the findings of our tests.

Optimizing Videos

First things first, we did learn a few things from our tests about what you can do to optimize the videos you’re creating for advertising:

• Go square. Square videos take up 78 percent more space in the News Feed and have consistently outperformed landscape videos. In one of our tests, we created a video to promote a HubSpot blog post, 22 Handy Slack Hacks Everyone Should Know. We created square and landscape versions, and the square video performed better across the board, with a 50 percent lower cost per click and 45 percent more engagement.
• Think about your objective. This is important. Your video needs to address this objective. If you want to tease a blog post, for instance, you’ll want to make sure it’s clear what the blog post is about and you’ll need to include a clear CTA letting them know where they can read more.

Optimizing Images

We also learned that an optimized image can do wonders for the success of your ad. Here are a few tips to help ensure your image is optimized:

• Watch the text. Facebook ads may run with reduced impressions, or not at all, if too large a percentage of your image is covered by text. Use Facebook’s Image Text Check to make sure your image doesn’t exceed the limit. This is what we used to create the optimized image for our second test above.
• Be clear. Make sure that the image makes clear what people will get when they click through to learn or read more. This’ll help ensure that the folks that are coming to your page are actually interested in the content and will help reduce bounce.
• Be eye-catching. Choose something bright, clear, or unique to stand out in the News Feed.

But as we discovered, there’s no one-size-fits-all approach, so it’s important to test –try a few different things, see what works, what doesn’t, and iterate.

Optimizing ROI with A/B testing

Whether or not you’ve used A/B testing in the past, thinking about testing in the context of video can be a lot to wrap your head around. There are all sorts of things to test, from CTA copy to colors, fonts, what photos and video clips you use, what story you tell, and everything in between. Test videos against images; test videos against other videos; test everything and improve your results over time.

What Variations to Test

Not sure which variations to test? Here are some suggestions:

• Media variations: Try using different photos or video clips in a video to see which performs for you. Or, if you’re testing an image, try to optimize the image to suit your needs, as we did in the second test above. In this example, WV Skydivers tested two video variations—one starting with a photo and one starting with a video clip. The video clip variation reached 10K people, while the photo variation reached only 1.2K.

• Text variations: Try a couple different CTAs or change up the text to present your video differently, as we did in the test of a narrative vs. a listicle.
• Length: See if a short, medium, or long video gets the best results. We tested 0:15, 0:30, and 0:45 versions of the same video in one of our tests and the 0:30 video had a stronger click through rate. But we’ve seen instances where a long video has performed best and those where a super short looping clip has won, which is why testing is important!

How to Set up A/B Tests

You can set up A/B tests in Facebook. To get started you’ll need a Facebook page, a Facebook Ads Manager account, and some ad variations — two or more videos, two or more images, or a combination of images and videos. Simply run two versions of your ad and be sure to keep everything the same except for the variation you are testing. This includes the ad objective, budget, target audience, and any copy that runs alongside your ad (unless the copy is the variation).

As you test, you’ll begin to understand what resonates with your audience and can hone your strategy going forward. By not assuming that one type of content will work best for your advertising you can start creating ads that perform.

Animoto and HubSpot recently joined forces to create a collection of video templates for business owners looking to create professional marketing videos to promote blog posts, boost event registration, or collect leads for a product.