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What Do Fewer Facebook Ad Units Mean for Advertisers?

What Do Fewer Facebook Ad Units Mean for Advertisers?

June 28, 2013

In an effort to improve marketing performance and harness social voice, Facebook recently announced simplified ad types. Previously, Facebook offered 27 ad units – ranging from Sponsored Stories to Coupon Offers to Page Post ads – which required advertisers to pick and choose from up to to 600,000 permutations. It’s no wonder that advertisers found it difficult to buy media on Facebook and complained that the ad products offered were ultimately too complex.

Now Facebook will be eliminating duplicative ad types to reduce confusion when determining where to invest marketing dollars. Less complicated ad units will help achieve business objectives while improving the advertising environment for brands and direct marketers.

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Marketers can now ditch the time-consuming efforts that came with having to plan a Facebook ad campaign around which of the 27 ad units to use, and instead make choices based on a pre-determined list of business objectives. From getting more fans to increasing app installs to driving consumers to brick and mortar stores, marketers can leverage Facebook’s ad system for recommendations on the right kinds of ads to run.

What does this simplification in ad units mean for advertisers?

1. Increased Social Context
Social context will now be applied to all ads in order to improve performance and harness the power of Facebook’s social platform. This greater emphasis on social context will enhance advertisements and engage users by leveraging the ‘voice-of-a-friend’ whenever available. For example, when a brand creates an ad from one of its photos, Facebook’s system will automatically show which of your friends likes it.

2. Improved User Experience

With less ad clutter, users will be more likely to engage with ads while scrolling through News Feed. Ads are less intrusive and brands will be able to show users standardized ads that are easier to understand and share. Additionally, with social context built into all ad units, users will be shown ads that better match their interests or have been promoted by their friends.

3. Alignment with Campaign Objectives

These changes are being made based on marketer and advertiser feedback to improve the Facebook advertising platform. By simplifying ad products, brands will be able to optimize and scale campaigns to achieve business objectives with consistent pricing. Furthermore, while brands will always maintain control over which ad types to use, Facebook will recommend ads based on selected campaign objectives.

By improving the overall experience, this new Facebook advertising environment is beneficial to both users and marketers. Users will see more consistency in the types of ad displayed in their News Feed, while advertisers will have a simpler way to reach their target audience based on the brand’s specific objective. Additionally, by automatically applying social context to all ads, combined with increased News Feed exposure, advertisers will be able to better align with users’ personal interests and create more targeted content. In the ever-changing world of Facebook advertising, this simplification should help companies – big or small – easily reach users across the world’s number one social network. In this case, the age old saying holds true: “Sometimes less is more.”