Facebook Rolls Out New E-Commerce “Collection” Ad Format
Facebook wants to drive sales. The company has put a lot of work into making itself a viable platform for e-commerce companies. Last week, they took another step.
The platform has launched a brand new ad format called “Collection”. A video or photo sits on the top half of the advertising unit with four recommended products below. Retailers either choose the products they want to feature manually or Facebook will pull popular products from a retail merchant’s website.
Facebook Collection Ad Video Guidelines
Facebook monetization director Maz Sharafi told TechCrunch the goal with the collection format is “to really build a great new shopping experience for people and to help marketers really drive discovery and sales in mobile.” The ad form is designed to be easy for users to set up, with Facebook offering powerful supporting in picking the right products to showcase from the merchants’ broader catalog.
Tommy Hilfiger, Fb, Adidas, Lowe’s, Michael Kors and Sport Chek are some of the retailers that have already tested Collection. Throughout the holidays, Sport Chek ran a campaign using GIFs and the sporting goods retailer says the ad format doubled conversions and increased online sales by 28%.
Facebook Collection Ad Photo Guidelines
According to Adidas, their campaign offered a hoodie and related products like bags and shoes, resulting in a 1.8X drop-off in cost-per-conversion. “This new advertising format has everything we have to introduce a brand new product and drive sales,” explained Adidas’ performance marketing senior expert in a statement, Rebecca Watts. “Collection has outstanding cross-selling capabilities, and we’ll certainly explore this new format to inspire and raise sales.”
Once somebody clicks through on a promo in the newsfeed, they are pushed to a quick-loading landing page (similar to Facebook’s Canvas advertising) where people can browse through up to 50 products. People can then buy those items by simply clicking on the product to visit their site or app.
As part of the launch, Facebook is also examining a brand new metric for Collection and Canvas campaigns called Outbound Clicks to give marketers stats on how many people clicked through to the businesses site or app. This will also be available to advertisers on Instagram.
E-commerce is a growing focus for Facebook. On Monday, Instagram also added a free feature that allows jewelry, clothes, and beauty brands tag their photos with shoppable links.
Looking to capitalize on this new exciting type of ad? Connect with us and we will gladly work on the best route to driving your e-commerce sales on Facebook.
