Facebook’s existing ad formats, including image carousels, auto-play videos and more, will be wrapped into one product which is being tested by the company presently. These will be content-heavy mobile ads that look just like a post on Facebook but open into a full-screen ad, says a report from Re/code.
New ads to bring more revenue
The new ad operates like a mini version of the advertiser’s website. It is comprised of multiple pages of videos, images and text through which the users can easily scroll through. The ad content is hosted on Facebook primarily, but users have the option of clicking to the external sites.
Facebook’s interest in this direction can be easily understood. The social network wants the content on its site to be of superior quality, so it is working with publishers and brands. These ads are far better than the traditional sponsored posts within the News Feeds. The new ads that take over the full screen and are comprised of several images and videos can be sold at much higher prices than the existing ads.
To stop users from going to other sites, Facebook is making a push into hosting more content. The company has begun doing so with the news articles, and a commerce portion of the site is also being built to hosting the products. The new ads are based on the same concept, but here the product is the advertiser’s website.
Facebook testing the new ads
In June, Facebook showed the advertisers at Cannes Lions something very similar, but at that time it was nothing more than a mock-up. The ads will take time before they can be seen on the platform since the company is still testing the format with a small group of advertisers, including Michael Kors, Gatorade, Mr. Porter and Carrefour Spain are among those.
“We look forward to seeing how marketers use this surface to create compelling experiences for people and drive key objectives, including brand affinity and direct response,” said Kelly Graziadei, director of ads product marketing for Facebook.
Facebook is also trying to get a sense of what kind of ads will work for different advertisers by testing different combinations of content within the experiences. For example, a brand might prefer an ad that features lots of videos, while a retailer might prefer an ad that has lots of images rather than text.
For marketers, the ultimate goal is getting a reasonably good return on their investments, and Facebook will have to prove how hosting an advertiser’s content is a significantly better experience.
