For the second time we had the opportunity to pay a visit to Facebook in their Dublin headquarters for their yearly LevelUp event earlier this month. The event is focused on getting video game professionals to improve their use of the Facebook platform to engage with the very passionate gaming crowd. Among the dozens of guests, some big names made their appearance such as Activision Blizzard (Call of Duty, World of Warcraft, Overwatch), Rovio (Angry Birds) or Riot (League of Legends).

The first day of the event being Star Wars day (May the 4th), the 100 guests were greeted by no other than Darth Vader, R2-D2 and a giant Chewbacca taking selfies and just casually sharing space cocktails with us. If you like video games, chances are you are also a Star Wars fan, Facebook found a great way to break the ice!

Facebook welcoming party on May the 4th.

The second day started with an inspirational talk from game designer Brenda Romero addressed mostly to game developers about hard work leading to greatness. It was followed by a series of other talks by Facebook partners and video games professionals, here is a condensed version of the shared wisdom and insight which can be applied to any industry:

1. Facebook ads

Overlay text on your ads will hurt your campaign’s performance, most advertisers know that but still, 46% of the ads that are rejected are declined because of text overlay (20% rule). It is worth noting that a test has recently started in the UK where ads with too much text are no longer declined but instead have their delivery limited. Read more about it here.

Lead ads will help you improve form completion rates. Filling a form on Mobile can be a real pain, with prepopulated fields Facebook partially addresses this issue. Another (underrated) benefit from using lead ads is that it is embedded with Facebook’s interface, you no longer need to take the user to a different page.

Canvas ads allow more information to be told in a very creative way. Feeling creative? Check out canvas ads, though this format is Mobile exclusive it looks very promising.

2. Facebook video

Breakdown your 15 seconds ad in three 5 seconds segments A/B/C (that are interchangeable when possible). The first 3 seconds are critical to get your audience attention, make sure to have something catchy to show as soon as the video starts.

85% of video ads are seen without sound, so take that into consideration when planning your video campaign. If you really need to get people talking on your ad, Facebook added an automatic caption feature.

Try new interactive ways to engage with your audience. If you have a strong relationship with your audience or an active community, Live stream can improve that connection you have with them, Facebook has integrated it quite well already (Facebook Live). When you end your broadcast, it’ll stay on your Timeline or Page like any other video. The new 360° videos seem like a fun tool as well, though I find the downgrade in quality quite frustrating after getting used to 1080p videos but I am certain this will improve in the future.

3. Instagram

Instagram is bigger than you probably think, with 400 million accounts its reach is quite large. Instagram users spend on average 21 min every day on the platform, the non-reciprocal relationship can be leveraged by brands given that they provide nice looking content (this is what Instagram is about after all). This channel emphasizes on beautiful creatives and works best with brand awareness campaigns rather than direct response ones. Just like the Facebook business page, Instagram should soon have the option to create a business profile (Summer 2016), stay tuned.

4. Gaming industry

Yes, eSports are still growing, and have good days ahead. During a panel talk held by Facebook partner David Gilbert, 3 main reasons were highlighted for the growth of eSports. Number 1 is the technical side, it is now very easy to live stream thanks to platforms like Twitch and more recently Youtube and Facebook added that functionality. Secondly, the entertainment provided by games fits very well with the channel, most platforms allow the audience to chat together and more often than not the streamer interacts with his/her viewers. Third point, watching someone else play video games is no longer lame, or not as much as it used to. Thinking about it, no one makes fun of people watching Football, and ESPN understood that and are getting seriously into eSports. It is now up to advertisers and marketers to find good way to monetize those audiences.

Facebook held an interesting event overall but what I personally appreciated the most (besides the very “realistic” R2-D2) was that the game developers and marketers were all part of the discussion of the future of the industry, and I hope to be part of it next year again.