We, as consumers, are no strangers to video ads – for decades we’ve seen TV ads presented to us during designated commercial breaks; and in the last decade, we’ve seen a growing prevalence of ads being displayed as a precursor to of video content we’ve chosen to consume. So why are we so appalled by the idea of video ads on their Facebook and Instagram newsfeed?

The most important reason for our apparent disdain for video ads lies in the way they’ll be delivered to us on social platforms. On both Facebook and Instagram, videos ads will be presented in the same way that Facebook/Instagram posts from other users appear on our newsfeed. With the recent backlash for Facebook’s autoplay function, which has been blamed for hiking up people’s phone bills.

In fact, almost every form of video we’ve been introduced to so far have been presented in an autoplay format, just think TV and Youtube, while there’s always the option to skip the third party content, they do play themselves without our explicit instruction to do so, but the thing is, we know when to expect them. But now ads will pop up in places and at times that are impossible to anticipate, and chances are, if you haven’t changed your setting, the tape will start rolling before you realize.

For all the above reasons, advertisers are faced with new challenges when delivering video ads to social platforms like Facebook and Instagram. In order to capture the attention of social media users who may or may not have disabled ‘autoplay’, the video’s thumbnail and any single moment of the must offer an attractive reason for users to stop scrolling for moment and watch a video in its entirety, all the while making sure that the ad adhere to type of content that is shared on a particular user’s newsfeed on a particular platform. Instagram had promised to “ensure that they contain mostly fresh content, fit the vibe of the platform and are not simply repurposed TV/Web commercials”, because they, too, realize that without it, it will be nearly impossible to persuade users to voluntarily (for some, at the cost of their data usage) consume advertisement.

Social media is a great platform for brands to connect with and reach out to customers. Many businesses take to social media to monitor and gather information about consumers that may not be otherwise directly available to them. But why wait the shadows and listen, when you can start these conversations proactively?

Vancouver outdoor gear brand Arc’teryx has recently executed a swift and effective plan to gather feedback from consumers.

It’s clear that the purpose of this post is to elicit consumer preferences when it comes to wheeled luggages – a product that is currently not in Arc’teryx’s line-up, though not far out of the ball park. Consumers are incentivized to complete this survey by being “entered to win” a $300 jacket. It’s save to assume that people who have liked the Arc’teryx Facebook page all have some level of desire to own at least one Arc’teryx product, and the opportunity to win one at the expense of the few minutes it takes to answer a simple questionnaire is just too good to pass on. Furthermore, by posting the questions on Facebook, this act to reach out to customers seems far more personally than sending out an email or on a piece of paper, because Facebook is where many of us go to converse and catch up with friends and family.

Now let’s take a look at the response:

more than 500 likes and 443 direct responses to the questionnaires. Almost all the responses are detailed and relevant to Arc’teryx’s product development. This post went live at around 3pm on October 8th, which is most likely when the product design team was about to wrap up a day’s work. By the time they reconvened the next morning, they already had all the responses needed to proceed with the newly gathered intel. Arc’teryx was able to reach out to and elicit valuable responses from its target audience as they began to head home from work or sitting at home scrolling through their newsfeed, without wasting any valuable time of their own, all at the cost of only one less jacket from their warehouse. In the process, they made it known to hundreds of customers, as well as their friends, that Arc’teryx was in the process of developing a wheeled luggage, and that they should keep an eye out for the product that the consumers themselves had input in. This is a great example of leveraging owned media to generate earned. But having 38 selfless evangelists who shared the post despite diminishing their own chances at winning the jacket didn’t hurt either.