Facebook just announced a few more updates to its efforts to “simplify” its ad products. The company recently revealed that it plans to cut down its existing ad units by more than half. More on that here.
Even since that announcement, we’ve seen Facebook kill sponsored search results.
New updates for Page Post Link Ads include customizable images, a simplified flow for unpublished Page post link ads, and a redesigned ad create flow.
“Facebook Page post link ads are optimized to drive off-site conversions and sales,” Facebook says in a blog post. “Over the past several months, aligned with updates to News Feed, we’ve enlarged images and the clickable area for Page post link ads on both desktop and mobile. These enhancements help advertisers better showcase their products and services. Since these updates, Nanigans, a Facebook Strategic Preferred Marketing Developer, has seen Page post link ads in News Feed drive better performance their clients who are driving off-site conversions and sales. This is why we’re continuing to update the Page post link ad unit, and encouraging marketers to use it to meet their direct-response objectives.”
With the new customizable image feature, advertisers can upload any image, as opposed to Facebook sourcing a thumbnail image based on images on the linked site. Obviously this gives advertisers a great deal more flexibility.
“Unpublished Page post ads allow marketers to tailor the right messages to specific groups of people, rather than having a Page post appear to everyone who likes their Page,” Facebook says. “We heard that marketers want the ability to create these type of ads in a more self-service way, so now they can easily create a new unpublished Page post link ad directly in the ad create flow, instead of having to select an existing post to promote.”
“We know Page post link ads in News Feed can outperform domain ads on the right-hand side, and we want to encourage marketers to take advantage of this enhanced performance for off-site conversions,” the company adds. “So now when a marketer enters an offsite link as the ad destination, rather than defaulting to a right-hand side format, we’ll automatically allow advertisers to choose a domain ad for the right-hand column and/or an unpublished Page post link ad for News Feed. This removes the guesswork when transitioning from advertising on the right-hand side to advertising in News Feed.”
Here’s what the new Create flow looks like: