Illustration by Nick Barclay / The Verge
Creators on Facebook are getting a handful of new tools on the platform — including the ability to test how different Reels perform against each other.
The most notable new feature is a Reels A/B testing tool. A/B testing is a common marketing and publishing tactic where elements of a piece of content — say, a newsletter or article — are tweaked to see which drives more engagement. On a news article, for example, publishers often test several different headlines to see which one readers respond to the most.
On Reels, creators will be able to set up to four different thumbnails or captions for a single video in a test. According to images of the feature, different versions will be shown to separate groups of a creator’s audience for 30 minutes. At the end of the testing period, the version with the most plays will “win” and show up on the creator’s profile unless they change it. The feature is available on mobile for now, and Meta says that, in the future, it may also offer AI tools to generate captions and thumbnails.
Image: Meta
Creators can test up to four versions of a reel.
Meta also announced a few features that could make managing content a little easier. On a creator’s professional dashboard, they’ll now be able to see how all of their posts are performing and take actions like hiding posts from their profile or moving them to the trash.
Creators will also get a bit more data on how their content is doing on Facebook: the platform will give users a 90-day view, up from the previous 28 days. Other new data points include how a reel performed relative to a creator’s other videos, a viewer retention metric that shows when audiences dropped off, and view counts that include replays of a reel.
Correction November 2nd 4:09PM ET: This story previously stated A/B testing allowed for four different captions and thumbnails. Creators can test a caption or thumbnail, but not both at the same time. We regret the error.
