Facebook Introduces Four New Mobile Ad Formats & Features
In terms of mobile engagement, Facebook sees the most with 1 billion daily mobile users. Luckily for marketers, Facebook recently announced four new mobile ad formats and features to assist marketers with reaching these on-the-go users and measuring mobile advertising impact in stores.
1. Creative Hub
First up is Creative Hub, an interface designed to make it easy for users to sample different tools and features, collaborate, and experiment. For example, there’s an area that allows marketers to preview evaluate and showcase creative. There are also options to preview this creative on a variety of different formats (such as on mobile) and send preview URLs to clients or other people on the team.
2. Upgrading Canvas
Canvas is an full-screen, mobile-optimized experience that loads 10 times faster than typical mobile sites. Facebook describes it as a “full-screen ad experience built for bringing brands and products to life on mobile.”
Canvases provide a customizable digital space for marketers to include information about their products and services and before June 22, were only for Facebook ads or sponsored posts. Now they are available to everyone, not just advertisers. Marketers now have the opportunity to create a Canvas of video, still images, text, and call-to-action buttons to link to an organic or sponsored post. New updates to this feature will also include more detailed metrics for metrics such as time spent and click throughs.
3. Mobile Ads & In Store Tracking
One of the biggest challenges for brick-and-mortar businesses is measuring how digital advertising campaigns truly impact visits to stores. Yesterday, Facebook launched a new feature in its “Local Awareness” that can help companies solve this problem. Facebook is is making a store locator available for any “Local Awareness” ad to help customers identify and travel to the nearest store. Facebook will also be including a “store visits” tab under its reporting tab to help businesses track foot traffic. And finally, Facebook will be making a “Offline Conversions API” available to help businesses connect their point-of-sale system or phone system to see how ads impact in-store sales.
4. Improved Slideshow Video Ads
A popular ad format amongst advertisers is the slideshow ad. Facebook allows advertisers to create a slideshow video ad using multiple static images. Since these types of ads load significantly faster and with less data required for users, Facebook has introduced a few new features that will allow advertisers to create these slideshow ads from a mobile device. Now you can upload images, add audio and text overlay and integrate with Facebook Pages and Shutterstock photo libraries.