Facebook had rolled out the ‘Canvas Ads’ feature in 2016 within the platform to help businesses advertise their product offerings in an eye-catching manner. When activated, the section became a mini-site in itself with product listings displayed on the entire screen. With more and more purchasing decisions happening on the mobile currently, businesses find Canvas a viable channel within Facebook to get a creative outlet to display their brand online. It did help marketers compellingly tell brand stories, but Facebook thinks that the name itself doesn’t convey the gist of what the page does.
To tackle this, it has now announced that it will be renaming the ‘Canvas Ads’ page to ‘Instant Experiences’, which is exactly what the social media platform does. The upgrade also consists of a few other back-end refinements in order to improve performance and page load speeds. Additionally, users now get to add in their contact details easily.
What has changed?
Here is a peek into the different changes brought about in the new ‘Instant Experiences’
- Instant Storefront: allows businesses to display retail products in a grid format.
- Instant Lookbook: prompts businesses to showcase their products in the context of a lifestyle image.
- Instant Customer Acquisition: allows businesses to showcase the products and integrate a clear call to action for the user to carry out an action after seeing the ad.
- Instant Storytelling: makes great use of graphics and video to let viewers know your brand better and connect with it.
- Instant Form: allows people to quickly share their contact information for enquiries.
Of these, the Instant Forms is a welcome addition. It helps users to leave behind an email or phone number so that the business can get back to you with a sales call.
What’s in store for marketers?
Marketers who want to track customer journey from initial view of the immersive ads right up to the conversion can now do so easily. This way they know when and how to re-engage with prospects. This is primarily driven by Facebook Pixel and third-party pixels into the campaign. If you are using Facebook Pixel on the website, it will automatically be integrated with the ‘Instant Experiences’ section as well. This tweak is expected to add substantial value to the marketing performance measurement function.
It is indeed a refreshing change from the older interface provided by Canvas Ads. While the front end for “Instant Experiences” doesn’t undergo a radical transformation, there is a marked improvement in how the users respond to the interface. Especially with the Instant Forms options, the engagement part toward the buyer journey becomes easy to accomplish. For brands who haven’t tried out Canvas Ads in its previous avatar, the new “Instant Experiences” can be a great starting point to create Facebook ads and make an impact in front of Facebook users.
Do write to us and let us know how your experience with the ‘Immersive Experiences’ ad display section within the social media platform was? We would love to hear from you.