4min read

Facebook Releases New Product Ads

by Article by Remington Begg Remington Begg | April 28, 2015 at 4:00 PM

shutterstock_176941343Marketing on Facebook just got a little easier. Facebook released product ads, giving businesses the ability to promote different products in several ways on the social network. This will allow businesses to showcase more relevant products across many devices and permit consumers to find more relevant products. Let's take a look at the details of these product ads and the effect they will have on your marketing.

What are Facebook Product Ads?

Facebook summarized in a blog post that their new product ads are a solution made to help businesses promote several products, or an entire catalog of products, across all devices their prospective customers use. Marketers now have the capability to upload their product catalog and design campaigns targeting specific products and certain audiences. Additionally, you can let Facebook deliver automatically the most relevant products to their people. A new format has been introduced that shows off multiple products. Products can also be show in a single ad unit. Product ads can be customized several times during the buyer's journey - a very exciting feature for inbound marketers. Two possible options are:

  • Reach people automatically who visited your website/app through the Custom Audiences tool, or reach people based on location or specific interests.
  • You have control over the ads you want to deliver. For example, you can choose to deliver ads that highlight products that were viewed on your website or mobile app, or just choose your best selling products. Another option is creating a multi-product ad that shows the different benefits of a single product.

Why are these ads beneficial?

Product ads don't just make life easier for us marketers; they were also made with users in mind. These new ads utilize features that help create a better ad experience. When a business uses automatic delivery of product ads, Facebook's system will turn off ads for products that are currently out of stock. Since Facebook is well aware of users' interests and moves that make online, they will use this information to tailor ad delivery. Users will see what Facebook believes they most want to see from a particular business. Before product ads, marketers were forced to design specific campaigns for specific products targeted at specific audiences. Facebook has removed this trial-and-error process and the extra work for you. This will saved you time and money trying to figure out the perfect ad scheme.

Using Facebook product ads in your marketing

Product ads are now available in the API through Facebook Marketing Partners and will roll out in Power Editor over the coming weeks. Facebook offers these brief instructions on how to get started with their new product ads:

Multi-Product Ad

1. Go to Power Editor and create a new campaign in the objective Clicks to website or Website conversions.

2. In the Create Ad section, select Multiple images and links. Complete all fields.

3. To determine the best order to show your ads in, select Automatically select and order images and links.

4. Click Upload Changes to save

Dynamic Product Ads

1. Upload your product catalog. This should be a list of products you would like to advertise on Facebook. You'll need a Business Manager account to upload your catalog to Facebook.

2. Set up your pixel. Place the Custom Audience Pixel on your website and change it to report when product IDs from your catalog are being viewed, added to cart, and purchased.

3. Create a dynamic template. Give your ads a title and use keywords to pull in images, product names, prices, and other features dynamically from your product catalog.

4. Run dynamic product ads.

Several businesses have already experienced success through product ads.

John Boris, Chief Marketing Officier at Shutterfly.com told Facebook, "The multi-product ad unit allowed us to display a variety of products we offer at Shutterfly in a clean, engaging way. The ability to control product order placement offered gifting inspiration for our current customers and created a natural introduction of products for our new customers, resulting in a 20%+ increase in click through rate."

These changes to Facebook will help you perfect and further develop your inbound marketing campaigns. The most exciting part is that they will help make the user experience for your potential customers more satisfying. Get started with Facebook product ads today!