Last October, Facebook announced a new format of advertisement for its platform called Slideshow Ads. These ads were meant as an alternative to video ads in developing markets where bandwidth may be limited. Seeing the hugely positive response from advertisers and brands, the company today announced a number of new features and services hitting Slideshow Ads.
Slideshow Ads was Facebook’s way of working out a good user experience for developing markets where video ads aren’t so feasible. Until now, advertisers could map 3 to 7 photographs that would play over a fixed time period– 5 to 15 seconds. The format not only took emerging markets by storm, many bigger markets also started adopting Slideshow Ads because they are more cost-effective than video ads.
These ads can be created in a matter of minutes with little or no production costs and are more engaging than still image ads.
The ads are now getting many new updates including text and music support, mobile ad creation and even a new tool to convert video ads to slideshows.
Slideshow Ads will now allow brands to add text, select templates and choose colours to create a rich visual experience. Along with this, they will be provided with a large range of music files that can be integrated into their ads. According to Facebook, advertisers will soon get the ability to select their own custom music files.
The social giant has also fully integrated Slideshow with its stock image database and the Pages Photo Library feature, so advertisers can choose from thousands of stock photos, reuse photos from their Pages Photo Library or upload new ones.
Ad creation is also going to become simpler for on-the-go users. The company’s new mobile ad creating service will allow developers to work on their brand stories right from their smartphones. The service is currently available for Android. An iOS app is just underway.
Seeing the effectiveness of Slideshow Ads, many companies started switching to this format from their traditional video ads. Until now, the ads had to be hand-made. But now, Facebook is launching a tool that will automatically select 10 image stills to use for building a slideshow. This not just saves time, but also enables advertisers to present their ads on slower networks.
