Social Selling in Action; Facebook Unveils New Product Ads

Allison Howen
by Allison Howen 19 Feb, 2015

Facebook is introducing a new ad format that enables businesses to advertise multiple products in the News Feed.

The format, dubbed product ads, is designed to help businesses promote multiple products or their entire product catalog across devices. In fact, product ads offer a variety of ways for businesses to highlight different products on Facebook. For instance, marketers can upload their product catalog and create campaigns targeting certain products to specific audiences. Additionally, marketers can let Facebook automatically deliver the most relevant products to people. Products can be shown in single- or multi-product ad units.

Facebook also notes that product ads can be customized for use throughout the customer journey, from the discover stage through the purchase stage. The ad format enables advertisers to automatically reach people who visited their website or app, as well as reach people based on specific interests, locations and more. Advertisers also have the ability to showcase their best selling products or highlight products that were viewed by a consumer on their website or app. Moreover, advertisers have the ability to create a multi-product ad that highlights the different benefits of a single product. Plus, when an advertiser utilizes automatic delivery of product ads, Facebook will turn off ads for specific products when those products are out of stock.

According to Facebook, the new ad format is currently available in the API through Facebook Marketing Partners and will roll out in Power Editor in the next few weeks. The social network also says that early adopters of product ads, including Target, have seen strong results.

"With dynamic product ads, Target has been able to more easily engage consumers with highly relevant creative," said Kristi Argyilan, Senior Vice President, Target. "The early results have exceeded expectations, with a 20 percent increase in conversion compared to other Facebook ads. Performance has also been especially strong with people shopping on mobile devices - an important and fast-growing area for Target - where we're seeing two times the conversion rate."