20/09/2023 • Ryan Hakeney
Facebook Ad Formats & Their Best Practices
Paid Social Article
TL;DR
This blog post explains the different ad formats available on Facebook and provides best practices for using them effectively. It emphasises the importance of high-quality visuals, relevance to the target audience, and a clear call-to-action in any ad format.
The post covers image ads, video ads, carousel ads, and collection ads, highlighting key tips and strategies for each format. It also mentions the use of instant experiences for smoother user journeys. By utilising a variety of ad formats and testing their effectiveness, businesses can optimise their paid social performance on Facebook.
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Introduction
Are you looking to reach more customers on Facebook? If so, you need to understand the different ad formats that are available. In this blog post, we'll take a look at the Facebook ad formats, and break down how to use them to reach your target audience.
Facebook is one of the most popular social media platforms in the world, with over 2 billion active users. This makes it a great place to reach new customers and grow your business. However, with so many businesses advertising on Facebook, it can take time to stand out from the crowd.
One way to stand out is to use suitable ad formats. Different ad formats can be more effective for different types of businesses and goals. For example, if you're selling products, you could use a carousel ad to show off multiple products. Or, if you're promoting a service, you might want to use a video ad to tell a story.
In this blog post, we'll take a look at the Facebook ad formats, and explain how to use them to reach your target audience.
Facebook ad formats
For advertising on social media platforms, there are three golden rules that apply no matter the format:
- High-quality and appropriate aspect ratios for your placements (e.g. feed placements: 1:1, story placements: 9:16)
- Relevant to your target audience
- Include a clear call-to-action.
So, although there will be listed tips for each format, it goes without saying that these three are important no matter the format.
Image ads
Despite being the most basic format, Image ads are a great way to grab attention and promote your products or services on Facebook. They can be used to achieve a variety of advertising goals, from brand awareness to lead generation.
There are a few key things to keep in mind to ensure simple image ads are successful:
- Use clear and focused text that tells users what you want them to do, without detracting from the image (avoid repeating information, or including irrelevant text).
- Consider how your copy looks. You might spend time, money, and skill creating a beautiful graphic, but if you place it next to a big ugly paragraph, it will harm the aesthetic.
- Track your results to see what's working and what's not. Image ads are easy to change. Test different images and copy using A/B Testing (whilst that is best practice for Facebook ads generally, it is simple to do with this format).
Image ads can be a powerful tool for promoting your products or services on Facebook. By using this simple format and following a few key tips, you can create ads that will grab attention and get results.
Video ads
Video ads are another popular Facebook ad format. Whilst being more time-consuming and difficult to create, they're more engaging than image ads. They can be a great way to tell a story or explain your product or service.
To create a video ad, you'll need to create a video clip that highlights your product or service. The video can be a shorter snippet, or longer if you are trying to tell a story, but remember - attention spans on social media are short. “No one wants to see your ads”. They are scrolling through for instant entertainment. Not a self-indulgent 30-minute video on why the business was started.
You only have so much time to tell someone what they get out of your product/service. Use a video format to tell a story of how your business benefits them:
- Keep your videos short and sweet. Whilst you can use long-form video content, it is not advised. The 30-second mark nicely covers best practice on social media.
- Use eye-catching visuals. Your videos should be more than a 4K camera on a tripod. Consider how they are edited (think Mr Beast on YouTube or Nike’s ‘Write the Future’ ad - snappy angle changes, repeated stimulation).
- People are more likely to remember your ad if it contains some level of storytelling. Use your video to engage your audience and connect with them on an emotional level (note: the emotion shouldn’t be X Factor-level sadness and despair). Make them feel excited.
It may sound overwhelming or unattainable to produce this level of content. Remember, these tips are best practice. How closely you can come to best practice is dictated by your in-house resource, particularly with video content. If you have a video you like, but it isn’t edited by Thelma Schoonmaker, test it out. No one can tell you with absolute certainty that something won’t work until it is tested.
Carousel ads
Carousel ads are a great way to show off multiple products or services in a single ad. They consist of a series of images or videos that viewers can swipe through. They can give a more comprehensive view of your products or service, and can be used in a variety of ways.
Each image represents a tile in the post. Each tile can have its own unique headline, description, and destination URL. Therefore, you could use each tile to represent a different part of your business, a different best-selling product, or a different stage of your story. Then having each tile lead to the landing page that represents that product/service/brand information is the recommended way to use a carousel ad.
One example might be a food delivery service. Each tile would be a different cuisine with a unique image, headline and description focused around that cuisine. Then if someone was to be swiping through and fancy an Italian food delivery, they would be directed there.
They are a great way to have direct control over what products/services you are placing in front of your customers.
Collection ads
Similarly to carousel ads, collection ads involve choosing a series of images or videos that take a viewer through a series of steps or products. Collection ads take a primary image or video, and accompany it with three smaller images in a grid layout. Once someone clicks on the collection ad, they are then taken through to an ‘instant experience’.
Instant experiences essentially allow your ad to directly link to your webpage without ever leaving Facebook, and can be used on any ad format. They make the whole process smoother, and the user journey seamless. Whilst they can be used for image, video, or carousel ads too, they are required for collection ads at the time of writing this article.
We have used instant experience to overcome the issue of users bouncing after a link click. They have shown interest, but something in the journey between Facebook and website caused them to bounce. This had a tremendous impact on reducing bounce rates.
A great idea for eCommerce is to use these collection ad formats with a Meta catalogue. That way, the algorithm will dynamically pull products from the catalogue you have uploaded. They will be selected based on the relevant interests and previous interactions of the individual. If they have viewed a particular product page already, that product will likely come up as they have shown behavioural interest in it. This is excellent to bring a tailored user experience to your remarketing.
Conclusion
By using more ad formats than the simple single image, you can figure out which works best for you and scale your paid social performance. Facebook gives us so many tools. It would be a shame to let them go to waste.
Or, if you don’t have time to test, optimise and scale your paid social activity, you know where to find us.
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