Where is Facebook Advertising Headed?
There are quite a few questions surrounding the future of Facebook as an elite advertising platform. With all of these new features, creatives are finding new possibilities to turn the millions of Facebook users into potential customers. Find your golden opportunity below!
Video Advertising
Video is growing from all parts of the digital marketing world, though video advertisements are beginning to stand out. In an act to increase engagement, video has become the dominant method for creating and distributing sharable content.
Videos work best for keeping viewer’s attention, much more than written content. For this reason, video ads have been proven to be effective for all stages of the advertising process, at all stages of the marketing funnel.
Videos are best utilized for selling experiences. Showing the fun nightlife of your long island tiki bar is much better than promoting a simple banner.
Content for Traffic
While this might not be exclusive to 2018, the idea of content being king is showing itself to be as true as ever. Using graphics alongside videos are great methods for driving website traffic. Facebook ads offer the option to optimize your audiences and positions for maximizing traffic, which is ideal for people in the middle of a sales funnel.
Facebook Messenger Ads
Facebook Messenger Ads are relatively new, and have somewhat of a connection to email marketing. These are perfect for a pearly white strategy. There are three main messenger ad types:
- Destination Ads
- Sponsored Messages
- Home Selection Ads
Destination ads are typically used to start conversations. You can position these on a newsfeed, just like most traffic-based ads, but can also reroute your call-to-action to send your page a message. These are very helpful for standing out from competing advertisers.
Sponsored messages are what people often think of when they hear “Facebook Messenger Ads”. These are sent straight to a user’s inbox, just like “InMail” from LinkedIn. These tend to be really successful for businesses looking to push a promotion that doesn’t require a lot of commitment. Users can stay on the messenger platform, rather than be taken to a third-party site, which reduces the risks of users bouncing from desired landing pages.
Home selection ads are also used through Facebook Messenger but appear on the dashboard of the app, rather than a tailored message in the inbox. These are great for grabbing users attention during early stages of ad campaigns. With less competition than other formats, like say, a newsfeed, people are more likely to notice ads on the app’s dashboard.
Carousel Ads
Carousel ads are giving Facebook ads a makeover in the eyes of retailers all over the world. These ads use multiple images and offers to provide a richer experience for potential buyers, These are excellent for the later stages of a campaign because they tend to have calls-to-action with more purpose.
Collection Ads
Collection ads are similar to carousel ads, but have a little twist at the end. They allow users to browse through various products and/or deep in-app pages. This is ideal for furthering awareness initiatives while increasing awareness due to higher engagements and no bounces since most of the process is done on Facebook’s platform.
Canvas
Canvas ads take up entire mobile screens, all on Facebook’s ad formats to transform ads from a single video or image into a full screen, scrolling experience. These are best used for high-quality images and is used mostly for selling art and other image-based products.
SlideShow
These take a new position on approaching Facebook users. Slideshow ads use lightweight video at faster loading times, which not only keeps user attention for longer sessions but also does less to interrupt the user’s browsing experience. Think of slideshow ads as a transition, or introduction to video ads, since they are a smaller investment and is used more like image-based marketing.
Lead Generation
One of the biggest obstacles Facebook marketers find are low conversion rates due to faulty landing pages. Facebook’s lead generation ads take this out of the equation by loading forms on their platform. This makes the process faster and easier and prevents any potential obstacles that might users might face on a landing page, such as slow loading times, on-page errors, as well as the general inconvenience of being taken to a third-party page. These ads make the experience so much easier because it is known to drastically increase conversion rates for lead generation campaigns.
A perfect example? Something that requires the attention of a potential client or customer. Say you’re promoting an auto insurance“>auto insurance company and you want to attract people’s interest. Lead Generation campaigns are the way to go, as far as Facebook ads are concerned.
Conversion Ads
As effective as Facebook’s lead generation platform is, there are still many reasons to prefer inbound (third-party) traffic. This is done largely because companies want to encourage more website visitors that can pay closer attention to their content, with less competition. It appears to be more of an “all or nothing” approach because it either leads to a bounce or a higher quality visit. This works well when advertisers manage their audiences effectively and are properly utilizing Facebook’s audience pixel. This pixel keeps track of people who visit your site from Facebook during a certain period of time and can be used to store data and eventually reach them in a less effective manner.
Remarketing
Remarketing is the final stretch of a successful advertising campaign. Also known as the backbone and “money maker”, the remarketing stage is the process of targeting past website visitors, usually as a reminder of a particular promotion.
Remarketing is also becoming a strong method for app engagement. Look for more long-term campaigns from brands that rely more on remarketing for further brand engagement and conversions.
Bringing it All Together
These are the trends that will dominate Facebook Advertising for at least the coming months. Let us know if you have had success with any of these methods, or if you think we missed another good one.
Good luck!