Facebook has 2.5 B users each month. It is a powerful platform that has the ability to reach your ideal audience. Facebook has many different types of ads you can use, from single image ads to video ads, but which ad type performs the best?
Types
There are various types of ads you can use within Facebook, and this post explains each ad type with examples. Which one is best for you? To choose the best ad type you first need to think of your campaign goals; do you want to increase page likes, get more sales, or generate leads? Once you have the goal of your campaign in mind, you will then have a list of relevant ad types to choose from. Once you have your ad copy and ad creatives, you will need to choose the correct audience. From there, you will test various ad types to find the one that works best with your target audience.
Results
I have an e-commerce client that sells t-shirts. They launch new graphics several times a week and have a strong Facebook presence. Our campaign goal was sales, and we also wanted to showcase our products to our audience. We chose to use carousel ads and collection ads. We test new ad types regularly, and here are some results we have seen.
We had 3 different ad variations running: carousel ads with 2 images, carousel ads with 7 images, and collection ads. During the three months that these ad types ran, we had the following results:
From this, we can see that the collection ad type was the winner with the highest click-through rate and the lowest cost per acquisition. Collection ads are a great ad type used for showcasing products and encouraging users to explore your brand.
We have also tested using video ads compared to static image ads. Video ads are strong creatives that can help grab your audience’s attention. Another benefit of video ads is the opportunity for retargeting. If someone watched your video, they have displayed an interest in your brand or products. You can retarget to someone that watched 25%, 50%, 95%, etc. of your video. For the same company as mentioned above, in Q4 last year, we had two different video ads running. The first video creative had a 26% increase in CTR and a 537% ROAS, as compared to the static image ad. The second video creative had an 8% increase in CTR and a 20% increase in ROAS.
A video ad is an effective marketing tool but sometimes this is the most difficult creative to create. You can also create a slideshow ad on Facebook, which is an alternative to video. This ad type allows you to add multiple images into Facebook’s tools to create a moving slideshow.
I have covered the different types of ads and a few results on which have worked best in one account but to determine which work best for you requires testing. You should test different ad types, analyze results, and repeat! Not all of your campaigns will have the same goals which means certain ad types may not work as well for all campaigns. The key component of this is continued testing!
Need inspiration on ad types or want more information on specs? Check out our ad gallery.
