Introduction to Facebook advertising, Ad formats and placements


Why brands choose to advertise on Facebook?
As per Reuters, more than 5 million businesses are advertising with Facebook each month. This figure has grown from 3 million monthly advertisers in March, 2016. Facebook has emerged as a major challenger to Google’s monopoly in digital advertising. Facebook’s advertising revenues are 27 billion $, which is relatively smaller compared to Google’s 80 billion $. But Facebook seems to be catching up fast.



Facebook had 1.86 billion active users across the globe as per the data released in September, 2016. More than 90% of these users access FB via mobile devices. They spend a significant amount of time going through the posts in their networks via the website and the app. Facebook can leverage the users’ demographic data, location, interests, life events, etc. to provide precise and targeted advertising from brands which are relevant to a specific user. These brands and products need not necessarily be the big corporations, but even the smaller and local businesses use Facebook advertising.



Facebook advertising objectives
Using Facebook platform brands can advertise on Facebook, Instagram, Facebook messenger, Workplace (FB for enterprises) and Audience network (set of partner applications and websites which display FB ads). For this post, we will limit our discussion to Facebook app and website only. Brands can set up campaigns under the following three categories:



(a) Awareness: Brands have FB pages to connect with their customers where they post regularly about products, initiatives, competitions, discounts, etc. To increase awareness about their brands they can set up FB campaigns to:
  • Boost posts
  • Promote the page 
  • Reach people near the business
  • Increase Brand Awareness
  • Increase the reach
   (b) Consideration: This campaign attempts to let the users consider their product and try to gather more information about the business. This includes campaigns like:
  • Send people to a destination on or off Facebook
  • Get app installs
  • Raise attendance at your events
  • Get video views
  • Collect leads for the business 
    (c) Conversion: Objectives that encourage people interested in the business to purchase or use the product or service:
  • Increase conversions on the website
  • Increase engagement in the app
  • Get people to claim an offer
  • Promote a product or catalogue
  • Get people to visit the physical stores
Facebook ad placement 
Facebook advert placement decides where your ad is displayed on the screen. Advertisements may appear in mobile app news feed, desktop news feed, right column and Instagram mobile ad. While creating the advertisement, you can select from these four options:

Desktop news feed ad is a part of the news feed which appears in the center of the webpage while browsing Facebook.This looks just like any other post in your newsfeed. The only difference is that this is paid for by the advertiser to be shown to the intended audience. Right column ad is relevant only for desktop and is very similar to desktop news feed ad. The only difference is that it is displayed on the right hand side which is separate from the newsfeed. This ad is effective as it is not place in between hundred of items in the newsfeed. But, it is visible distinctively even when you scroll the page down. An example of desktop news feed ad and right column ad is shown below:


A mobile ad is specific to the mobile web or native application. This is similar to the desktop newsfeed ad. An example for the same is shown below:


We will discuss Instagram ad placement in a separate section.

Facebook ad formats
When compared to the other advertising networks, Facebook provides a variety of interactive and visual ad formats:

(a) Photo ads: These are single picture ads with a call to action to like a page. They can also show promoted posts from brands or individuals.


(b) Video ads: These are ads where a video is shown instead of a picture. They provide a better description of the product and engage the customer better.


(c) Carousel ads: These are multiple product ads which show multiple products of a brand in one ad. The ad displays a product with an option to swipe through the remaining products.


(d) Canvas ads: These ads have been recently launched by Facebook and provide a more immersive engagement with high visual appeal for the customers.



(e) Local ads: These ads for local stores near to the customers which invite the customer to visit or call the store. They have the directions link in the app to the physical store.


(f) Event ads: These are event ads which let you show willingness to join a business or social event and notifies your network about the event. Some examples can be a career fair or a seminar.


(g) Leads ads: These ads provide leads to the interested business. They allow brands to get the details of the interested customers without them having to leave the app. The form for entering the details opens in the Facebook app itself.

(g) App install ads: These ads target the relevant audience with the option to download the app from the ad.


(h) Dynamic product ads: These are re-marketing ads. In this case the business has to provide a product catalog, create an ad template, define targeting rules for different products. When a customer visits a particular product page on the business' website, he/she is shown the ad for that particular product when he/she visits Facebook again.



That would be it for this post. The next post will talk about the usage of Facebook ad network, running campaigns and using different ad formats.

References:
1) https://www.facebook.com/business/ads-guide
2) http://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-adds-a-million-advertisers-in-7-months-2017-4?IR=T
3) https://adespresso.com/academy/blog/facebook-dynamic-product-ads/
4) https://blog.bufferapp.com/facebook-ads


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