Facebook steps up mobile storefront image with new ad tools

By

Cassidy Mantor

Published
Jun 28, 2017

Facebook is making a mobile storefront play for retailers and brands by offering a new set of advertising tools in time for holiday campaigns.

Facebook revealed it will be offering three new ad products. First, Facebook will offer video for dynamic ads which is a departure from static images that populate user feeds. Second, Facebook is offering overlays for dynamic ads where retailers can add information such as a price or a markdown. Third, Facebook will offer household profiling where ads will be pooled to target members of a complete household.

Digital brands including Wayfair, Betabrand, Made and Boxed have already been testing out the new tools. Director of Marketing at Wayfair Jess Jacobs said they are able to drive "higher quality customers at lower cost" of acquisition through the use of Facebook's dynamic ad tools.

Facebook has arguably fallen behind in mobile advertising. Instagram has emerged as the undeniable leader in digital branding and retail platforms. Influencers build their own brands on Instagram and the platform has gained momentum organically over others. Brands are now even deactivating their Snapchat accounts and migrating over to using Instagram stories for their core social media marketing efforts.

A Facebook study showed 1.7 percent of all first time impressions from ads convert to sales on Facebook. Instagram converts 2.5 percent of gift shoppers to sales.

With the new products, Facebook aims to facilitate a first impression of a new product or brand. Facebook learned that 30% of over 20,000 people it surveyed across 17 markets preferred to learn about a product through video.

To that end, Facebook is trying to apply its value as the original social space to execute a traditional marketing strategy of telling people what they need before they form their own opinion. It is also hoping to retarget consumers using existing data.

Graham Mudd, Product Marketing Director at Facebook said, “If you look at 20 to 30 years ago, that was actually done through broadcast media but in a feed-based environment we have the opportunity to do that in a much more relevant way.”

Unfortunately Facebook has a weak track record of actually harnessing social commerce compared to sites like Amazon where people actually click to buy. Facebook's ads have always taken up an awkward space on a site that held the premise of social networking, not commerce.