Facebook’s New Ad Platform

Oh happy days! Facebook has recently launched some HUGE updates to its Facebook ad platform, that not only make your ads better, but make designing and creating ads infinitely easier! For a social platform, that’s only real revenue source is advertising, this update is long, long, long overdue.

But as you’ll find out, there are still some kinks in the system. But let’s get to the changes and how they affect you as a customer or fellow marketer.

New Ad Sizes & Designs

This may not be new to all of you, but Facebook recently made some changes that actually make these ads work.  When you enter an external URL into the “Destination” box you get the option of doing a News Feed ad if your content relates to a page you’re a manager of. The best part? You get 200 characters and a much bigger image to work with – a minimum 154px wide and tall.

Where this ad format falls short, is that in the same “ad design” you’re forced to use the square image in the smaller version of your ad that appears on the right hand side. Yes, you have the option to turn this off, and yes, you have the option to rebuild a customize version of this smaller ad later – but it would save you a ton of time doing it all at once. And since Facebook’s stock is improving, they really should start doing things to benefit their shareholders…

Time Saving Tools

This latest addition to Facebook ads makes split testing images easy as pie.  Since images generally have a bigger effect on CTR then copy, this new tool has simplified this process immensely. Facebook now allows you to upload multiple images at once – up to 6, and then they will create duplicate versions of your ads using the different images.

Now you have no excuse not to split test images!

Great work Facebook, nice to see you’re trying to make advertising for effective and easier!